


North Wind Panther

by FicticiousDelicious



Category: Bleach
Genre: Alternate Universe, Blood, Bows & Arrows, Cold Weather, Complete, DO NOT REPOST MY FANWORKS, Freeform Norse and Nordic Themes, Frozen North (wintry and cold weather) Themes, Gay, Guns, Harm to Animals - Hunting & Poaching, Homosexuality, Hunters & Hunting, M/M, Mild Gore, Multi, Mythology - Freeform, Norwegian Mythology & Folklore, Other, Pain, Sex, Skinning & Tanning & Butchering, Slash, Small Towns, Snow, Supernatural Elements, Transformation, Violence, Winter, bara, cabin living
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-26
Updated: 2020-03-29
Packaged: 2021-02-27 23:01:13
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 9
Words: 31,711
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22903621
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FicticiousDelicious/pseuds/FicticiousDelicious
Summary: The eyes of a hunter are open and watching. A year-round resident of Espada, Grimmjow is not trusted or liked by his small frozen town. Reclusive and stoic he has chosen to watch over the line between town and woods with a killer skill for the hunt, and one day a stranger is thrust upon him..This story is ongoing. Keep checking for new chapters.This is an Ao3 exclusive story! You'll only find it here.!!Disclaimer!! I do not own the characters mentioned in North Wind Panther nor do I make any profit of any kind from their mention. Ownership of these Bleach characters goes to Tite Kubo. All Characters © Tite KuboDeviantArt.com/FicticiousDelicious or FicticiousDelicious.Tumblr.com
Relationships: GrimmIchi, Grimmjow Jaegerjaques/Kurosaki Ichigo, Grimmjow Jaegerjaquez/Ichigo Kurosaki, Other Relationships
Comments: 46
Kudos: 116





	1. Chapter First - Þögn

_Panter af Norðanvindinum_

Chapter First – “Þögn”

In the small town of Espada, somewhere in the mysterious wintry north, the cold wind howled as it sliced through the air with gales of snow flurries and the brief sight of things one might question to be real. Here in this small, old town there were some who stayed in the warmer months where the temperature rose only enough to melt the top layers of packed snow turned to ice on their roads, and flew like snowbirds off to another place when the true and harsh winter came. Others…stayed year-round, for reasons all their own. Some for the silence of winter, some the coziness, some for scientific studies and yet others for no reasons disclosed but they seemed to want to be left _alone_.

A young lady tapped her fingers together as she sat on a soft and old couch watching a stoic man stoking a fireplace ahead of herself. She in her almost full set of winter gear, with just her coat and boots left at the door on racks dripping dry, was very comfortable in this place. It was a cabin that smelled richly of pine, cedar and leather with furs and leather upon the walls and humble furniture around the aged floor. Tier took off her knitted winter hat and looked at it in her hands, not sad but pondering, as two thin tails of hair hanging down from either side of her blonde bob dangled.

Grimmjow, the stoic man, finished rearranging logs burning in the single fireplace that heated up this space, his one-room home – a cabin he’d built, and stood up with a crack of his bones – his knees and his back. Less thickly dressed in clothes for warmth, as he’d been at home while Tier had driven through the cold weather to visit him, the man in his sweater with pants tucked into his socks stuck his hands in his pockets as he stood in front of the fireplace and stared into the brightening flames. It warmed the front of his legs and body well. Anterior. He turned around, it warmed up the back-side of his body. Posterior. Then he moved toward the lone couch, room for three people, and silently sat down a cushion’s length from Tier. The bearded man leaned back into the aged plush of the couch, hands still in pockets. His head’s shaggy blue hair was taken back in a small tail. His trimmed moustache and wild blue beard of about three inches long did not move for his mouth was still and he was silent. _Peaceful_ even.

Tier waited silently with him, and they both watched the warm, magnetic flames of the burning logs until the crackling wood burnt down to only murmuring coals, meanwhile just thinking their own lives’ thoughts or letting their minds clear. It was how they got along, similarly, until the time turned to sunset and Tier knew she had to be off. As she left and Grimmjow handed her coat to her without words, Tier patted his arm before she left politely and went quietly out into a dusk winter setting and falling snow. Behind her the cabin glowed, from the door and few double-paned windows. A man’s long shadow loomed in the doorway. She always remembered that Grimmjow sacrificed some things to have his peace here, and she would never disturb him and not question it. _Ever_.

As Grimmjow saw her out the young lady, walking back to a snowmobile parked by the gate of the post and rail sort of fence around his property, had a blissful tranquility. Tier fit into the peace here. She was beautiful and so attuned to these ways… Tier belonged here, yet she left every true winter… That fact bothered Grimmjow for some reason but he never talked about it; he still didn’t like it. Though the depths of his soul roared with something volatile which he kept to himself, he was silent. Somewhere in him he liked having this company and was unsettled when it was gone. The eyes of the snowy panther watched something that could be prey go…telling itself over and over that she was not game… Goodbye snowbird. Goodbye for now, into the silence of the snow.

Read ALL my fanfictions on ArchiveofOurOwn.org. Art via: DeviantArt.com/FicticiousDelicious or FicticiousDelicious.Tumblr.com

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Þögn - Silence  
> Panter af Norðanvindinum - Panther of the Northern Wind


	2. Chapter Second - Verndari

_Panter af Norðanvindinum_

Chapter Second – “Verndari”

Several days later, following the departure of the couple hundred seasonal residents, the considerable peaceful recluse Grimmjow had come to town to buy salt and bullets and other supplies before the first _major_ winter snowfall hit. He lived on the outskirts of Espada by himself in a log cabin with an acre of mostly empty land next to the woods that led into the harsh mountains of this wintery north. Therein the woods he found sustenance and knew his way around well; he felt attuned where the trees were most dense and never got lost. In contrast…in town he sometimes felt unusually aimless, but today it was hard to forget that he needed supplies. Grimmjow was dressed thick and warmly and stomped his snowy, icy leather boots off before he came into the oldest mercantile in Espada – not because it was the oldest, but the most reliable. The planks of aged wood under his boots clonked. Somehow whenever he entered a space it felt like it became even quieter… Grimmjow looked back at anyone else who looked at him _so directly_ that he could feel their chills as they yanked their eyes away from him quick. Perhaps he was someone not to be trifled with; perhaps it was very obvious by looks. With snow flecking off of the bearded man’s bear fur coat, some decorative furs of softer animals fringed on it, the tanned leather side was exposed and the fur turned inward for warmth – water-resistant it wept melting snow. A long rifle strapped on his back, Grimmjow made his way around the few aisles in the mercantile picking out essentials only and took them in an armful to the counter across the main room. Everyone else here just carried on.

A tattooed and wild-looking man of the mercantile, as he’d been here many a year and would be for many more, glanced down at the pile on the counter and then back up at Grimmjow’s vivid eyes. “That all you’ll be needin’?”

Grimmjow’s eyes shifted slightly over the other man’s shoulder and his moustache and beard moved a little as his mouth cocked. “No.” It was a deep and rumbling word. Grimmjow nodded at the different packages of ammunition on the back shelves of the mercantile’s walls. “Twenty-five’s. Two hundred of them.”

The mercantile’s minder, Renji’s lips puckered a little and he turned to seek the section with the correct sizes stacked up. Thick collective braids of crimson hair swung at his back bound with soft leather ties and he wore loose but thick modern clothes. “I’m outta lead bear bullets…” He looked back at Grimmjow, almost like he was reading what the other man wanted.

Grimmjow responded with a gruff and corrective tone, “Not hunting bear.”

“Oh! Deer? _Rabbits..?_ ” Those bullets were way big for rabbits.

“Deer. Elk.”

Renji looked more approving of that for some reason, probably the fact that both meats were far better for eating and there had been a lot of them around this year. The more elk and deer Grimmjow hunted the more venison there was to buy. It slowed down in the winter but there was always something. He took four boxes of .25 rounds off of his shelves, a hundred rounds in each, then set them on the counter in front of Grimmjow and opened the top of one to let the other man see them inside. The bullets in their jackets gleamed dull gold and copper. Usually Grimmjow was hunting with arrows though…

“I need two _not_ four.”

“Buy three boxes and you can _have_ the fourth. Ammo doesn’t expire you know~”

Grimmjow narrowed his eyes.

Renji had an exact reason; he sighed softly. “I could _really_ use a little more of your cash _today_ , so I can _send it along_ …save on a box of bullets for later for my convenience now, hmm? Is that a deal?”

Grimmjow took a moment to think and then agreed. “That’s fine.”

The blue-bearded man started taking out hundreds and counting them to pay for all of his supplies while Renji, the mercantile’s co-owner packed it all into a hefty cardboard box with a lid and cut out handles. “Will you hunt with your bow this season?”

Grimmjow nodded once.

Renji looked a little elated, kind of an archer himself. He knew better than to ask if he could hunt with Grimmjow though…but he sure wished he could. “Make sure you come get some heavy carbon arrows! I _love_ selling those to you.” This building and the mercantile business was owned by Renji and his adopted sister, Rukia, who lived in a city far away with their parents where she could get proper medical attention for a very serious condition. If treated enough she could survive but she couldn’t live here with Renji anymore. “Well that’s that,” the redheaded man assured after being handed the cash. He patted the top of the closed box of supplies before Grimmjow hefted it off the counter with a grunt. “Take care.”

Grimmjow’s eyes moved away to mind where he was going. “Be aware.”

As Renji watched the stoic man move out of the mercantile and aim to leave on the sidewalk past a slightly fogged window he sighed. The sparse people that remained year-round for winter were all strange, himself in there too, but Grimmjow was oddest of all with _really_ strange hair and a seamlessly direct way. He reminded Renji of the old ways…and that reason wasn’t unfounded. No one really liked Grimmjow, he wasn’t anybody’s friend…except maybe Tier and that was part of the problem; a recluse like that being nice to a young lady was just suspicious to most people but Renji…he knew a thing or two more about Grimmjow than anyone else did and the rest of the town had it all wrong. Taking to putting the cash away in the floor safe Renji set an extra hundred aside. Grimmjow always left him a ‘tip’ and Renji saved it for his sister. He’d never asked how Grimmjow made so much money from hunting and tanning. As for what Renji knew…one year the bear population had exploded and led to an accident. Tier’s father was mauled and Grimmjow had shot the bear responsible to spare Tier and her mother nearby. With a compound bow, a carbon arrow and deadass calm he had put a hole right through the unfortunate bear’s brain and out the eye. While Tier’s father was taken away by Espada’s police, later pronounced dead, Grimmjow had taken care of the bear. He built it a pyre, skinned then burned it without taking any of the meat. The furry pelt he tanned and this leather was given to Tier and her mother. It was not a story well-known in Espada, for these ways were not popular with the town anymore. For one season and one season only Grimmjow had hunted bear until their population seemed normal again, researchers had a part in that, and for their pelts more than meat. Renji had bought some of the bear furs and leather, that’s why he knew the story. Before all of that Renji hadn’t been sure about the man himself…Grimmjow had lived in Espada for years beforehand, but only after had Renji realized that a rogue panther wasn’t such a bad thing after all.

A man named Hisagi interrupted Renji watching their customer leaving by bringing up some much-needed restocking supplies with another of the mercantile’s workers, Nnoitora. A cheeky Renji and Hisagi both left Nnoitora at the counter while they restocked.

Nnoitora glared out the same window as Renji had been watching. Unlike cheeky Renji and Hisagi, Nnoitora had a generally peevish disposition.

The trouble with some of the year-round residents was that they didn’t all get along and hardly understood each other. To each it was mostly their own.

Grimmjow’s life played out like a self-inflicted jazzy blues tune or a bittersweet folk requiem; a song for one. The blue-haired and bearded man got on over the snowy and icy walkways with his boxed supplies to get out of town. The further away he got the more at peace he was. Why would such a predator try to create order and peace? Perhaps because of a few terrible things he’d done or known before this time… Grimmjow lived like a sentinel upon the hills by the woods, with keen eyes that saw, sharp ears that heard and senses that alerted, watching over the divide between town and woods and keeping its peace without a wall. Without much thanks. Without any extra assistance. It was his life’s work now; he was very self-sufficient and he was alright with that because in truth…he _liked_ to _hunt_. To hunt only as much as the woods allowed…it was hard, for he could strip a forest – decimate its life if he so chose…as he once had. Now the necessary hunt was the only time he allowed himself prey. He was not wasteful. He was not cruel, but he was a deadly hunter. He still felt like a predator of nature and wintry slopes, and it was true, in his leathers and clothes layered under and skills for killing. He was a butcher, a tanner, a hunter, a natural part of these cold northern woods. The North Wind Panther.

Soon the hardest snows of the year fell, hence why snowbirds flew away so quickly a week prior; to save themselves. There was four feet of white and almost everyone was snowed into their residences with their supplies and each other to keep company and warm. No telephones. No internet services. Just radios, books, gas-powered tools and of course fires to keep people comfortable at home. _Almost_ everyone was snowed in…

Grimmjow had been working all morning even with more snow coming down slowly, doing several things for himself. He had shoveled and dug paths to walk around that he would maintain toward the gate, supply shed and burn pit. Then he walked the square of his acre of land and dug through the snow to mend the post and rail fences. Next he checked on preserved deer and elk pelts and hide and some salted venison which he kept all in a shed around the cabin. With the world a freezer, the weather was to his advantage for keeping enough fresh meat to feed himself after selling the rest to the butcher in Espada. Here too in this multi-purpose shed he kept tools and less useful parts of his kills over many years, like antlers, they clicked hollowly together whenever a breeze passed through. When field dressing, the undesirable guts of game that Grimmjow did not prefer he either sold to the butcher or left out in the woods at a place far from his cabin for other creatures to consume. It was often freezing or close so decomposition was obnoxiously slow. The butcher’s shop was maintained by familiar Tier’s family in the warmer months and by another family in the colder ones. To them he sold all of his extra game, the town hardly knew his trade, unlike Nnoitora who hunted constantly and bragged almost as much. The difference between the two men was intelligence. Today Grimmjow found evidence of something greedy having come to his shed though. Something large’s path through the snow presented unfamiliar tracks and the storage shed’s door had been scratched open. Some of the meat was missing and his skins were a mess. The sled he usually drug his kills home on was tipped over. Some other stuff like his tanning post was disturbed recklessly. Thankfully nothing was broken. This was his own damn fault for not really locking his shed…but he could have sworn… Breath pluming, Grimmjow tidied up and gathered some skins. It would be a day or two more before anything else went wrong at least.

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**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Verndari - Protector


	3. Chapter Third - Reiða Sig Á

_Panter af Norðanvindinum_

Chapter Third – “Reiða Sig Á”

Sleeping by the fire in its place, Grimmjow was bundled into a blanket on his soft and aged couch where the bearded man preferred to sleep, when a hissing of static voices through a longwave radio on a desk woke him abruptly. He sat up with groggy eyes, yawning, shaggy and untied hair and an unkempt beard a mess, then stumbled for the radio and tried tuning it with his coarse fingers but it was all just static and probably picking up some random person in town on his frequency that was calling for someone else. The noise was soon gone. Many people who went out and about were given his frequency for emergencies; he did not mind. They hardly called though, usually just researchers mostly wanting to ask him about the terrain. To protect them he never laid animal traps when hunting. Grimmjow believed it was necessary to try to keep the two sides of nature safe…people and animals. Such beliefs were detailed in the old ways…it was a terrible deed to be able yet not help another in need. Perhaps a part of him enjoyed keeping people out of the woods… It did not matter now though, if he could not understand them he didn’t know what they wanted.

Wearing nothing but long johns, decently warm, groggily Grimmjow stumbled to a corner of the cabin where he could relieve himself – a clever composting bucket that he set a lid over and sprinkled sawdust in so it didn’t smell. Shame that nothing could be grown outside with such compost because the ground was always too cold. An outhouse would have been fine too but building one…it was just him here, so he really didn’t need that. The man glanced in a dusty mirror upon the wall as he finished and kicked the lid down. His hair needed a trim. After snipping away a good inch off the hair on his head he trimmed down his moustache to a bristly length and his beard to just an inch. Grimmjow took a long minute to look into his eyes through the mirror. He still recognized himself; that was good. Next came a short sweep to get up the hairs then a nice shower with warmed water from a small tank and a gas water-heater to wash off dirt, sweat and stray hairs. There was a showerhead dangling above with a split line to the tank and heater in the corner but also another line with a splitter attached to a spigot on the side of the tub; the water temperature was controlled by turning the knobs on the splitters or adjusting the water heater. It was very easy to have a nice bath or shower. Standing in one of two steel troughs he used as a tub Grimmjow lathered soap and rinsed it off. He pulled a chain to stop the water. He had to dry off and wrap up again quick or he would get cold. The second trough against the wall he often used for laundry. These minimalistic ways agreed with the old ways and made him feel satisfied and peaceful. Now back in his warming johns and cooking himself an early lunch of salted venison and canned vegetables in broth, the radio hissed _again_.

With attention dragged away from food the usually stoic, calm man was _really_ curious about who was on his damn frequency this afternoon – judging the time by the sun outside a window. He left his soup to cook a bit longer over low gas and parked in front of the radio, tuning the knobs while listening to it carefully. He left this radio on for emergencies, it ran on batteries that he could recharge, but he couldn’t understand the hissing words through the static. That or…they were words he did not know. Foreign researchers perhaps. Grimmjow wasn’t sure. The static voice hardly cleared up as he tried to tune in better. He thumped the radio with a fist once and that of course didn’t help either. “Shit…” This stupid piece of junk might finally be on the fritz.

Suddenly something hard struck his log cabin’s front door several times, bluntly, and Grimmjow jolted in his chair. What in the _hell?!_ Warily the bearded man stared behind himself and a human voice on the other side of the tough wooden door called out for help to which Grimmjow was very responsive. Nerves quickly collected and steeled and he got up and marched right to that door, picked up his rifle in case it was fraudulent, and with a firm hold he pulled the cabin’s only door open a crack with stern, blue eyes peering out. Some of the freezing air swept in through the crack.

There was a man outside, dressed in all modern wintery attire and some absurdly long scarf standing and holding his leg with a bloody trail leading up the shoveled pathway to the cabin. Some snow flecked off of the cabin’s roof around him. Blood dripped out of the fingers of the man’s gloved hand squeezing an injury against his leg. He looked so weary. Immediately when he saw someone answer the door at the cabin, regardless of the rifle with them – which he did or did not notice, he cracked a most relieved smile and then collapsed sideways near the door into a bank of shoveled snow. The snow crunched and gave under the weight as his breath plumed.

Looking a little surprised Grimmjow set his rifle down right away and jammed his feet into fur-lined boots then went outside in his johns to get the other man out of the frigid snow, for who was this stranger to happen upon his cabin in need of _serious_ help? Going out into freezing weather Grimmjow reached into the snow with bare hands to pick up the limp stranger. Stepping in some of the cold drift, just off his shoveled path to the door was cold on his legs where the snow was taller than his boots. With a grunt of effort he hauled the other man out of the snow and carried him immediately into his home. Grimmjow caught his front door with a heel and kicked it shut and shuddered as the cold left him for the warmth of the cabin and he hurried in front of his warming fireplace to lay the injured man down on the floor. The snow was quickly melting off of both of them in the warm cabin. Surely with all of these clothes this stranger at least wasn’t freezing to death. Sweeping a pendant dangling at his own neck back Grimmjow reached over the man’s head and tugged away a hood and pulled a hat and scarf off of the man which he laid under the back of stranger’s head.

The other man groaned a little with pain and a few blinks to look up at his potential savior.

“What happened?”

Among some pained breaths the stranger found himself able to respond. “I fell. I fell into…some _trench_ in the middle of nowhere! Out in the snow in the woods… Hnng! It was covered up. I didn’t see it…” Until it was too late apparently. This man was still very much awake and his eyes watched everything going on with his head slightly rolling side to side and trying to reach down and hold his bloody leg. Oh heck, it hurt! He was definitely not very comfortable. Hazel eyes blinked almost sleepily, his face flushed from the cold, and short hair the color of tangerines on his head was messy; the same gingery hair stubbled his jaw. He was so cold yet he did not shiver; it must have been all the layers.

Attention most immediately toward the bleeding, Grimmjow realized how _very_ serious this was by the light of the fire. Blood from the shredded remains of snow pants looked torn and clotted on one leg. The clotting and messy fabric stuck to it was probably the only thing keeping this stranger from bleeding out; the wounds were _all the way_ down this other man’s leg. Starting to reach for that long limb the stranger tried to push Grimmjow’s hands away.

“Just take me to a hospital,” the stranger insisted.

Grimmjow shook his head. “Impossible.” He tried to approach the wounds again.

Once more the stranger forced his energy into thwarting this and scooted back, barely sitting up. “Take me to a hospital!”

“I _can’t!_ Do you know where you are?!” Grimmjow shouted seeming angry.

The stranger looked startled or scared.

Grimmjow calmed down a little, swallowing a lump in his throat and the majority of his frustration. “There aren’t any hospitals here.”

The stranger was coherent enough to understand…with the weather here, so snowy and turbulent, there could be no extra help coming to him either. This guy was it. He too swallowed an evident worried emotion and started to pull tight the shredded clothing on his leg to get pressure as he sat up better with a long, pained sound. “W-well, do you…have any helpful s-supplies?”

Grimmjow didn’t waste time talking and went to get them immediately; he brought back a metal case, unlatched and opened it. “This.”

The stranger gasped relief again with a small smile down at an impressive stock. These were hospital-grade medical supplies… _unexpected_ , and to share the best that he had with a stranger… The warmth of the fire here in this cabin…smelling of pine, cedar, leather and some meaty kind of soup helped give him some comfort and energy to consider all of this too. There was hope. “This will help…”

“You know what you’re doing?” Grimmjow sniped with caution.

The stranger wearily nodded. “But I’ll need more of your help. Water. D-drinking water _and_ boiled water, please.”

Grimmjow stood up and went to the gas stove where he took his soup off and grabbed another pot and poured in water from a jug to boil. He brought the stranger towels, the boiled water and clean water in a mug to drink which was a little warm. Now they cleaned their hands. Grimmjow put on some plastic gloves. Once the stranger had a drink Grimmjow set the mug aside for him and took the stranger’s boots and socks off.

This step was pure agony for the injured man, “Aaagh!”

Grimmjow didn’t pity him; he had to put all of his energy into actively helping this man instead. The removal of socks revealed a very purplish ankle on the end of that severely injured leg. Grimmjow wiped off the crusty blood that had pooled around this foot in the boot, finding no bleeding wounds on it, and wrapped that ankle in a wet, _heated_ towel and let the stranger lay that out toward the fire where it could warm his sole next to his other foot. This was a comfort he figured would do the other man some good… They used a knife to cut the snow pants and under layers’ leg open width-ways to reveal the wounds. It was also unfortunately agonizing. Carefully they peeled off the blood-stuck material from part of the leg – the thigh at first. Oh it was a _mess_. The skin was split deep into the muscle and fat of the man’s thigh and these jagged and dirty wounds were irritated. Grimmjow had seen so much skin and blood he was calm, but the other guy…

“Oh my god this is s-so much worse…”

Well it was worse so Grimmjow didn’t waste his breath on false reassurances. The pantleg of the stranger’s clothes he opened up more. Cleaning off around the split skin and then pouring temperate water over the wounds down the whole leg, Grimmjow got a good look at the horrific gouges. The gouges were jagged and longer than they were deep with woody debris all caught up in the muscle and fat. Had this guy really fallen into a pit? There would have had to have been something very sharp on wall of it to do this…but the cuts started and stopped separately… Suspicions aside, the wounds bled generously and that was worrying. Grimmjow didn’t presently care about his cabin’s floor being bloodied.

Shakily the injured man had dawned plastic gloves out of the supplies and was managing to help pick out splinters of wood from a high part of the wounds in his thigh with tweezers while his host held a clean towel tightly around the rest of his leg for pressure. It took much effort to force numb hands to work. “Nnngh!”

They exchanged no more than short words as focus on this was _important_.

The blue-bearded host was sometimes asked to use one hand to pour water over the wound so that this man could see again and thankfully they discovered that no veins or arteries were spurting blood…so this man knew he might live another day. The stranger was starting to get more concerned though because there was still a lot of blood and debris that needed to come out of the gory wounds but, “I’m…I’m terribly light-headed…”

Grimmjow started to take over the task of getting debris out with tied towels holding any wound he was not working on closed tightly.

Meanwhile the man of tangerine hair rested his back up against the front of the couch settling with the pain as the room felt like it was moving.

Grimmjow found the tweezers weren’t enough for really tiny bits of debris jammed into the leg. “We’re going to have to soak this.”

The stranger groaned unhappily. “If I pass out y-you need to just close these wounds regardless, wr-rap them and keep me warm, so that I don’t die… I-I’d rather lose a leg.”

“I can do that.”

“I’m… _Ichigo_. Just…just in case.” He swallowed nervously as he watched the blues of his host’s eyes as they had a moment to stare at each other. What a way to be introduced.

“Grimmjow.” The usually stoic man responded. “And you are _not_ going to die, brother.”

The stranger’s nervousness was eased more by sure focus in Grimmjow’s features; for some reason he believed him. They had to clean the wounds better once the most obvious debris was gone. Warm water in the spare washing trough, it was clean, would do to try to use to loosen the rest of the debris and shake it out of so many deep wounds. However the bleeding had to slow down even more before that step because soaking would cause enough bleeding. This unexpected guest watched in a daze as his host’s hands tied up the wounds with towels again for pressure and ran off into the cabin, boots clonking in haste

Grimmjow came back with a round, flat container of strange salve. The heavy scent of herbs and a salty smell turned up in the air immediately, and after untying the towels the salve was smeared all across the wounds generously. Then the wounds were tied up again. They had to wait minutes for results. Grimmjow’s steady hands reapplied salve and tied the wounds up a second time, diligently, and continued to wait for the effects.

It felt like an eternity. A _painful_ eternity. The salve burned a lot at first, but as they waited the injured man felt a little strange, less in pain and the bleeding lessened too. The applications of a thick and herbal salve with some kind of clearish and salty base had helped and he could see tiny leaves in it. The rest of the ingredients were lost to his eyes; he could not even guess what they were but this was definitely no plain sort of treatment. Ichigo’s head swirled; he looked worried. Warmth and strain made him sweat; his under layers of clothing were sticking to him. He was both too hot and too cold, but in less pain, and he had more feeling back in his numb feet.

The blue-haired and bearded man’s focus hadn’t lessened just because of one step’s success. Those wounds were still plenty dirty. Using some of the precious water from his tank, heated before it poured into the spare steel trough, it filled the tub shallowly.

Ichigo had already started taking off clothes, at least he wouldn’t feel sweltering anymore.

In a minute Grimmjow was holding on tightly to the stripped-bare form of his now undressed guest, he lifted and slowly lowered the naked man into the steel tub of warm, not hot, water.

Pain returned in spears and Ichigo sank teeth into his lip and squeezed his hands tightly as he shut his eyes.

Right away Grimmjow was washing some of the salve off and gently blotting the wounds with segments of gauze. In a hurry the water was turning amberish-red.

Ichigo didn’t care that he was naked. He didn’t mind how this stranger was touching him, who seemed nice. What Ichigo did seem to mind though was how much this started to hurt again. It hurt _so badly_. _Worse_ even. “Aaaaha _hagggh!_ ” The air already smelled so heavily of blood and his sweat, but smells including the ones already present in the cabin could disappear among such rising pain when one’s sense of feeling was so wrought with it. “Pressure… Agh..! P-pressure!”

As instructed Grimmjow helped keep some pressure on the other man’s lower leg with his gloved hands in bloody waters, and they took turns trying to use more gauze to blot out debris for only so many minutes. They were doing the best that they could. Finally there was a point where Grimmjow noticed the injured man wilting as they were rinsing off the wounds and he quickly took him out of the trough with splashing, arm under knees and around the man’s back, soaking himself with the water and blood. Grimmjow briskly brought the limp fellow back to the warm spot in front of the fireplace and laid him down on a roughly thrown out towel. Blood, when watered down, stained far quicker his clothy clothes and the towel below. It looked thick against the injured man’s fair skin at first. Kneeling Grimmjow checked the wounds closer; they were bleeding a thinning orange color all down the man’s leg. He was quickly about rinsing them better then drying the skin _around_ them and grabbing hastily for the tin of salve and making it ready before jamming a hand into the medical box and shoving everything that was not a medical stapler and his salve away. “We just need to close this shit.” Grimmjow was showing the stapler to his unfortunate guest.

Ichigo was still conscious but losing it fast and he had to agree even though he knew this was just going to suck in every way possible. With a firm hand Grimmjow held pressure on the calf’s wounds and Ichigo propped himself up to use the medical stapler to close his thigh’s wounds. His host was helping hold the split skin together. “ARGH! Oh hells…” Involuntary tears dripped out of the sides of his eyes. After about the sixth staple punched in his skin of his thigh causing sharp pain Ichigo’s hands were shaking so badly he could barely manage.

“Gimmie that damn thing.” This guy’s blood was getting _everywhere_ , it was not clotting or thickening now, and if it didn’t thicken and stop his guest _would_ die. No salve could fix that. Grimmjow took over with a ruthless accuracy and mercilessly stapled shut the worst wounds first, putting the healing salve along the sealed edges of skin. It was hard to hold onto this man’s skin with slippery salve and blood on his gloved hands, there was even water and fluid somewhat in the gloves around his coarse and scarred hands, but he did manage without dirtying the wounds. In a fixed focus Grimmjow stapled shut the rest of the wounds without checking on how his unexpected guest was feeling. He’d worked with a _lot_ of skins…time was of the essence.

Not flushed, actually pale Ichigo was almost ready to be sobbing as the staples punched into his skin one after the other. This might be worse than the soak. It was so necessary to close up the wounds, somewhere in his pain-wracked mind he knew that and didn’t try to stop his host doing what needed done… Ichigo just watched things in front of himself with choked sounds and his eyes dripping, mouth just barely agape to breathe shakily.

When Grimmjow had finished the last wound, with a bloody stapler and even messier gloves, the bearded man looked up to realize that the stranger was staring at him in a pain-laden daze, sniffing back tears. Grimmjow actually felt bad…for the half a second before such quickly led to his guest wilting like a thirsty rose, worse than before.

Seeming like he’d passed out with a tired lean and eyes falling shut and Ichigo’s back dropped against the front of the couch and his head slumped. The fire crackled a little near them; it was at least warming to his nude state and not sweltering anymore though his injured leg was a little cooler.

The bearded man reached to make sure that his guest didn’t fall over and hit his head. “Can you hear what I say?”

“Yes…” Ichigo breathed in close-to-normal breaths through his mouth. The worst might actually be over. His head was swirling with agony…but he was _alive_ … Their hard work and all of the bloody towels, tweezers, that damned stapler and water…the floor…had been _worth it_. So far.

It looked like Grimmjow had field dressed something, only this bloody mess was shy of piles of viscera and instead had a short mound of very bloody towels. Grimmjow’s johns and especially the arms and knees were stained with blood – not the first time. His unexpected guest was still breathing but had a pulse though! With the easier part left and his guest in a pain-induced state of total dependency, Grimmjow covered the rest of Ichigo up for modesty then changed gloves and dressed the wounds in a final step to keep them clean and start healing. He double-checked the staples and, to Ichigo’s displeasure, replaced any that were not acceptable but that was only two. Wiping away most of his salve he mixed in an antibacterial, gauze and wrapped the whole leg in clean bandages as neatly as he could. He tried to rouse his unexpected guest after but the man was still very out of it.

A slight color was returning to Ichigo’s face and his leg was slowly warming up but he needed to rest.

Since this guy definitely wasn’t going anywhere soon…so much for fucking peace. Grimmjow covered his couch with a layer of towels that he didn’t mind if the injured man bled on and carefully lifted Ichigo up onto the comfortable couch, positioned him then covered him with the same blanket that he had been sleeping under prior to all of this. It was a warm one, wool on one side and fur on the other, but this was no common fur. Grimmjow knew the soft, warm blanket would be good to this guy.

Ichigo swallowed dryly as he was being covered up and a moment later there was Grimmjow with the soft scarf and hat that Ichigo had come in with rolled up like a pillow and then helping the injured man sit up to drink before laying his head back down.

As the mug had been set aside Grimmjow was reaching down, leaned over to tuck the edges of the blanket in so that Ichigo couldn’t accidentally roll off of the couch. The injured man seemed to rouse and reached up for Grimmjow around the blankets. Grimmjow dropped to his knees beside the couch, effectively knocking over the mug of water on the floor with a knee while the stranger held onto him about the beard. A gentle chaste kiss pressed against his forehead and as soon as Ichigo let go of his face Grimmjow fell back on his ass and scooted so far from the couch he almost ended up in the fireplace behind himself. Wide-eyed and wary now, he had a startled mind over this. He was not used to human contact like that, even chaste.

Right away Ichigo was relaxing and asleep soon; perhaps he didn’t realize.

Grimmjow blinked and eventually realized that if he stayed where he was he was going to get his ass singed; he also had a mug of water to clean up.

Read ALL my fanfictions on ArchiveofOurOwn.org. Art via: DeviantArt.com/FicticiousDelicious or FicticiousDelicious.Tumblr.com

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Reiða Sig Á - Rely On  
> (There were some different ways to say this but I decided that one with 'reiða' in it best suited Grimmjow, as the title and subject is kind of about him.)


	4. Chapter Fourth - Góður

_Panter af Norðanvindinum_

Chapter Fourth – “Góður”

Alone Grimmjow went into town on the morrow, through terrible snow drifts and near-freezing weather and unpleasant wind and snow flurries. No one usually plowed the road up to his cabin and he walked over four feet of snow in hand-made snowshoes for a couple miles until he got closer to town. The sky was overcast and threatening another heavy snow so he kind of had to hurry along. Espada’s year-round residents were somewhat about, plowing the roads, playing in the white drifts and shoveling it away from their own homes and stores; the weather didn’t worry them and it was less windy in town. The stoic man watched somebody get clocked in the face with a snowball. These were dangerous times! The first place Grimmjow stopped at was the veterinarian where he was sold some antibiotics. The snowshoes clattered a little and hung from a tie at his side. Next he went to the old mercantile. It was unsurprising to find the mercantile in full swing with many people stopping by for more supplies. The mercantile sold durable shovels that everyone needed as well as food that most would struggle to grow in the cold but it was canned, not fresh. When Grimmjow, in his bear fur coat and armed with a rifle strapped on his back, walked into the store around several people who were walking out with their shovels he shook off his coat’s hefty fur-lined hood and went about the aisles. Snow flecked off and melted on his beard. Regardless of whom he had to reach past to get things, the man picked out many items he normally did not buy and a lot of things he’d bought earlier in the week, extras, then took them to the counter in his usual way – an armful.

Unfortunately… _Nnoitora_ was minding the mercantile’s counter at this time of the day. The man gave Grimmjow a sour look right away. They were rivals by Nnoitora’s measure, but he honestly wished that Grimmjow would just drop dead.

As this lean and mean man wasted time staring him down, Grimmjow gave the other hunter a flat stare back that was edging into irritation; he wasn’t daft but he didn’t have time for this shit.

“Sucks to see ya twice in the same week, ya know that, Grimmy?” Nnoitora snapped.

Grimmjow didn’t look like he cared, “Why don’t you go get Renji…”

Nnoitora snarled and sauntered off. It was easier to hand this shit off to someone else.

A minute later Mr. Dreadlocks Renji was hurrying to the front and wiping his hands off from something. His dreads were twisted up in a bun and he had on an apron. He sighed when he saw Grimmjow looking unamused, then Renji smiled to make up for it. “Hi!” He tossed his drying rag under the counter. Everyone knew Nnoitora was kind of an ass and it made sense that a man like Grimmjow would have none of it. The red-dread-headed man blinked at his patron’s selection this time of medical supplies, pills, towels, personal items, etc. and more food, then looked back up. “You feelin’ alright?” Renji didn’t exactly get a response, just a neutral stare from Grimmjow who looked healthy as hell. The tattoos on Renji’s forehead furrowed for a moment and he ran and presented the total on a calculator for which Grimmjow counted out money plus his usual ‘tip’. “The amount…are you sure?” After all Grimmjow had just bought things here the other day…

“Yes.”

Renji smiled a little, folding the cash into a pocket for now. “Hey you know, if you needed I _could_ help…”

Grimmjow shook his head. He was fine. He did not need the extra help and Renji was no doctor else he might have considered it…

Before Renji could put the supplies into a box his patron took out a leather bag. Renji’s eyes glimmered a little to watch the smooth deerskin and drawstring bag open up and items put in it. It was light brownish, double-layered with a tougher leather on the outside and a dreamily soft one inside that was stuck down seamlessly and sewn with thick thread; the drawstring was a tougher leather with extreme smoothness to it. Artisan’s work. “Now I _know_ what I’m gonna do with my scraps and the leather Nnoitora let me have.”

Grimmjow’s eyes tilted up a bit in an approving but warning manner, “Bags and pouches are always useful, but be careful that the hide and leather you use isn’t scored badly.” That would be cut or nicked from poor technique in removal.

In a back room Nnoitora gritted his teeth.

“For quality,” Renji assumed.

Grimmjow nodded once. He figured Renji understood that not only was badly scored leather less appealing but a heavy object pressing on a weak point of the leather could make it easier to rip. With purchases collected Grimmjow was about to leave.

“Take care,” Renji patted his counter, restraining all of the other thoughts about leather crafts he wanted to mention: leather hats, scrotum pouches, strops, holsters and leather pants, because Grimmjow was polite but not chatty with him. It made a man wonder…how many secrets would this wise one take to the grave?

Leaving Renji with ‘be aware’ in parting again the stoic man was off, snowshoes clicking together. He pushed out recollection of Renji offering help. Some things were just best solved by only those which they came to. Grimmjow did not know who exactly or where the stranger at his cabin was from but he would not tell anyone else another man’s business. They did not need to know, unless they were a doctor of people, and there wasn’t one of those in Espada this time of the year. He stopped by a woman named Nel’s home and paid her for a baked good then the trading post across town for a few more things he normally didn’t get before heading home to his cabin. Trudging over feet of snow outside of town once again was more challenging because of addition to his weight but since the weight was close to his body snowshoes worked. With windchill it was terribly cold but as ever the man of blue hair and beard weathered it because of his gear and pacing; his coat’s big, furry hood was a save. The moderate couple mile walk it took was quiet, peaceful, even though it was a hard trek over deep snow. The furs decorating his bear fur coat dangled and swayed with his powerful gait. To wear the skin of an animal required thanks to the animal and the one who took care of them, and separately also the one who had started the creation of all life.

The bearded man stepped down and took off his snowshoes as he arrived home where he’d shoveled the snow away by his front gate. He shut the gate after going through with the snowshoes under an arm and could finally walk up a _shoveled_ path. It was good to earn some fitness but enjoying his own maintenance was pleasant. His breath plumed. With crunches Grimmjow’s tough fur-lined leather boots trudged over ice and snow toward his log cabin in the center of his acre of snowy land. Beautiful woods spanned his left and an expanse of white snow plains with the town beside the plains was in the distance to his right. There were no oceans, only frozen lakes, nearby. Large, cold, blue eyes watched everything as Grimmjow approached his cabin. Nothing moved. Nothing breathed. Nothing snuck by this man on his own land… Thankfully nothing he could see was out of order when he got back. The cabin door opened with the owner pushing it and he found his guest awake, sitting on the couch with his _pants down_ and examining his leg. Not really unreasonable, but a bit _awkward_.

Ichigo flinched as he noticed his host’s arrival. “Ah! Oh-” He tried to sink below sight with a grimace of pain and a sheepish face.

Grimmjow turned his eyes away and stomped off his boots before closing the cabin’s door, the creaking of wood and hinges then ‘clack’ and slide of bolting it, and set his snowshoes under the clothing rack and took off the drawstring bag of supplies so that he could take off his coat and boots. Today he seemed to be wearing something of a flowy leather tunic under his coat too because it was just so damned cold and he knew he’d be going through deep snow and wanted to be insulated well. His bearded cheeks were fairly blushed from the temperature and wind. Grimmjow looked a lot brawnier with all of his layers on; without them he was nearly the size of any average man with muscle and fit. The removed layers he shook any moisture off of and in this warm cabin they would dry on the racks by the door. The whole cabin notably smelled of strong pine and cedar and whatever Grimmjow had cooked for breakfast this morning. The fire was needing to be stoked again; that fireplace seldom went cold.

The other man besides the owner of this place was pulling up his pants, borrowed cloth pants, while his host was by the door. “Sorry. I…”

Grimmjow didn’t respond because he wasn’t bothered. He stripped down to just the soft leathery tunic, similar leathery pants but stiffer leather and socks. No doubt a pair of his warm johns were under those, wicking away sweat he worked up from his walk.

Ichigo gave up on offering an excuse because his host didn’t seem interested. “You left a bowl by the couch.”

To that Grimmjow did look at him, cautiously and relaxed when he realized that the other man was dressed fully. “Did you eat it?”

“Yes!” Ichigo chirped, with a little a bit of a flush coming across his scraggly stubbled face. “It was very good.” Soup, venison and vegetables – filling and tasty.

Grimmjow nodded fairly; that was pleasing. “Your leg?” Since the man had been checking it out just a minute ago.

“Uh, it hurts…it hurts _a lot_ but I don’t think it’s infected.” All that pain yesterday couldn’t be for nothing. He really didn’t want to lose a leg. Ichigo’s smile slowly vanished but turned into a curious look as he realized that his host was coming over to him with a smooth leather bag and opening it. Ichigo stayed still to see what this was.

Resting the bag on the couch’s arm next to where his guest on the mend was sitting, Grimmjow rifled through it for a few things like tea leaves and canned foods that he set aside then took out a waxy paper-wrapped pastry that was still steaming warm and handed it to the injured man right away.

Ichigo immediately forgot his melancholy and looked horribly giddy, holding onto the warm pastry closely. Wow… It smelled of apples and cinnamon.

Then Grimmjow gave the rest of the supplies to his guest. Antibiotics and if Ichigo was allergic he would go get different ones, some extra bandages and gauze, anti-septic, nutritional supplements and pills, razors, shaving cream, soap, a toothbrush and paste, a towel, some letters, envelopes and stamps, an empty-lined book, a pen and pencil, a little flashlight and the _bag itself_ he gave in all.

Ichigo’s eyes were wide. While he couldn’t leave the cabin for a while this was so useful, and _kind_.

“You’re not from around here and you’ll need these things.”

“How did you…”

The bearded man didn’t answer, but at the trading post where mail came and went in the town’s address and phone book there was no one named ‘Ichigo’ anything anywhere on the handful of pages. “You’re on the outskirts of Espada. Have you heard of it?”

“Yes, I think so.” Ichigo was left with a warm pastry and a beautiful deerskin bag of stuff now belonging to _him_. Smiling fondly upon the items, that kind gesture meant something deep. “I don’t think I have a way to pay you back-”

“Just take care of yourself while you’re here.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Góður - Kind


	5. Chapter Fifth - Grænir Draumar

_Panter af Norðanvindinum_

Chapter Fifth – “Grænir Draumar”

“Take care of yourself and if you need help. _Ask_.” Also known as ‘don’t cause trouble’ in a nice way. Grimmjow walked away from the couch to stoke the fire in front of it; he added a pine log or two, they were nice and dry and burned well but that was the last of the firewood stack. Curiously all of Grimmjow’s firewood was missing its bark. To keep them warm he would cut more wood off of the dried and covered logs out back, but first…standing up from the fire and gathering the items he’d bought as spares, mostly for the kitchen, he went to put them away. This log cabin was going to stay as tidy as possible.

Occupied otherwise Ichigo was petting the leather deerskin bag, inside and out.

“If you like it all that much turn it inside out, stuff it and sleep on it.”

Certain he would try that idea, Ichigo looked around for something to use to stuff into the bag; his hat and scarf maybe. He carefully shook his gifts out of the bag into a pile on the floor.

Grimmjow came by the couch with a full mug of drinking water for his guest who smiled and reached for the water to take a sip. Surely the snows afforded all the water a man and his company could ever need and want. In turn Grimmjow reached for pills off of the pile upon the floor and put unopened painkillers in his guest’s other hand after taking the leathery bag away. “Take them.” He left Ichigo to that and wandered off with the handmade deerskin bag.

As Ichigo wondered why his bearded host had taken his new favorite bag away, but figuring there was a decent reason, he started to arrange the pile of stuff on the floor and resumed checking on his leg. When that was done Ichigo sat up on the couch, bashfully sitting where Grimmjow couldn’t really see him pull his pants down again.

Something Grimmjow was doing made a dull dragging sound like that of wood and then hinges and a handle’s rattle.

Ichigo checked up on his leg more, and meanwhile he talked a little, “So what’s out here for you that’s keeping you in a cold place like this?”

“Peace.” There was a dropping ‘thunk’ at the same time as a rattle and the scraping sound again.

The injured man turned his head a little to find the other unexpectedly moving toward him and forgot what he was going to say next and just covered up his privates with both hands as his host deposited a soft leather tunic on the couch cushion beside a shy Ichigo. The clothing made a soft ‘thump’; it was all folded up and smelled like a…fire? Or smoky. That was curious. Next dropped the deerskin bag inside-out, closed and stuffed with fluffy wool. Realizing what he had here was going to be a nice pillow Ichigo started beaming and pushed on top of the bag. It squished! It was a perfect pillow! Ichigo’s eyes trailed to the clothing and touched the velvety soft leather then looked up in time to catch the bearded man make for the cabin door, dawning a coat, boots and gloves again. “Oh! You don’t have to leave while I get changed.”

If he cared about his guest changing while he was in the room he didn’t make it vocal or obvious. Grimmjow opened a low box by the door and took out a three-pound, single-sided and longer-handled axe. He gave the other man a neutral look. That wasn’t why he was going outside probably.

Ichigo quickly figured things out by the axe and buttoned his yapper. What was he doing?! What he’d said was presumptuous in a number of ways. This was just going to get more and more awkward if he didn’t watch out for what he was saying better.

Like nothing had happened Grimmjow went right back outside into the cold to attend things in his shed and get firewood.

When he was alone Ichigo sighed a little; he knew he wasn’t doing a very good job of talking to his host. A few minutes later while Ichigo was taking off his clothes and changing the wounds’ dressings, just sitting nude on the couch, there were ‘thocks’ and clattering around the backside of the cabin and the cracking ‘whack’ of an axe splitting more wood then more clattering. That was kind of how he knew he’d be fine like this for a minute. Ichigo had just finished with his leg and scratched at his tangerine hair as he’d also put on the tunic with just his thermal shirt under it. The soft tunic hung well down to the middle of his thighs; he could walk around in just this! No painful pants, how nice. He ate about half of his apple turnover before it got cold then relieved himself before his host got back and snooped around just a little… Just a totally harmless, curious inspection of his surroundings. There were only windows on two sides where the sounds of chopping wood were not. Ichigo circled the cabin. Blood on the floor from yesterday was totally gone…not a stain in sight. How efficient his host was. A powerful compound bow and carbon arrows were mounted on a plaque decorated with moon phases over the mantel and out of reach without something to stand on. Pity… Ichigo noticed hair-off leather decorating the walls, they were flawless and stretched into perfect oval shapes with string and loops. He was pretty sure they’d been here the whole time. The washing area was tidy and the water heater was off. Most everything seemed to be powered by gas or fire in here. Ichigo found a flat tin of the salve that he thought Grimmjow had used on him yesterday…closer inspection revealed it was salty and herbal with tiny leaves but had the vague scent of a flower he didn’t remember ever growing anywhere near here. With another sniff there was something else…a rich and sweet herb, maybe more. Everything about this salve smelled fresh though. He put the thing back exactly where he’d found it on a ledge of wood under the mirror by some personal items. Around the kitchen there was enough nonperishable food it looked like for many more people than two, obvious why. There were some very dried herbs hanging up on the walls, not many but some. There was no cold place to store things though. Where did this man store the meat he cooked with? Outside where it was nearly freezing probably. Obviously all of the water they got here came from the snow; there was no shortage. Ichigo dared peek under a few pieces of furniture and found there was a trapdoor under his host’s bed, a real bed which the other man had been sleeping on. However Ichigo couldn’t move the bed or crawl under to the door and limped as fast as he could back toward the couch. Why? Well because he realized he couldn’t hear the clattering and chopping outside anymore.

Really soon Grimmjow came back into his home toting two huge armfuls of firewood in bundles by thick ropes. He kicked the door shut and hefted them toward the fireplace and they set down with huge ‘clonks’ upon the wooden floor.

Actually a little naughty, Ichigo was innocently sitting on the couch hugging the wool and uncommon fur blanket which he’d been sleeping under and squishing his bag-pillow. He hadn’t been able to check out the radio yet.

Seeming none the wiser about anyone snooping around Grimmjow started to arrange the firewood sans bark in smart stacks against the wall beside the mantle. Large split logs into two piles and kindling next to them. With his hands in gloves and sleeves pushed up he took a few logs to the fireplace and stuffed them in to build it up but minded the blaze so that it didn’t choke. Afterall it was getting to be afternoon and it would get colder sooner with this winter weather. Sparks danced as the smoke stole away up the chimney chute. It was warmest to sleep by the fire, hence his habit of sleeping on the couch…however…there were other butts occupying his favorite place in the cabin right now; to which he was surprisingly tolerant.

Hazelnut eyes watched.

The solitary man finished with the fireplace and got up to put the ropes for the firewood on a hook by the door.

“Did you build this house just for yourself?”

Grimmjow didn’t answer.

Ichigo went quiet, fingering the very soft, velvety tunic he’d been lent…or was it a gift too? He sure liked it enough to hope it was a gift! When the injured man focused on his host again he realized that the blue-bearded man was going right back outside again. Maybe a little tired of being alone, Ichigo started to get up from the couch, looking like he was reaching for pants and socks and going to follow the other man to the door.

Grimmjow took notice. “Stay. Here.” The cabin door shut with creaking wood and hinges and a firm clack. He was not kidding.

With a huff Ichigo’s face looked displeased. What a shitty host actually…when it came to company at least… Without being a brat Ichigo occupied himself by snooping around a little more but his only extra discovery was that he had no idea how to use the radio and that there were skins tanning in layers of bark in some covered tubs that were under the radio’s table. So that’s what happened to all of the bark… The boxes had been closed _and_ covered by tarps. When opened though they smelled potent as hell like bark, leather and something very animal so after putting the lids back on he hoped that his host wouldn’t notice the scent when Grimmjow came back. “Phew.” Ichigo glanced out the window over his host’s bed and still saw sun…fading but it wasn’t dark or dangerous. Maybe he could just pop outside for a minute. It wasn’t a good idea but Ichigo told himself it was fine anyway. Socks and cloth pants in place, not very comfortable but he needed them, the curious guest limped over toward the log cabin’s door. When next going for boots he noticed his own sitting there completely cleaned. That was amazing! There had been so much blood on the one. Ichigo loosened his modern boots as much as possible and carefully put them on. It hurt since his ankle and foot were still bruised. Next he put on his modern coat and found his gloves perfectly clean in the pockets. This was actually fairly amazing. Grimmjow had gotten one hundred percent of the blood out of _everything_ but his socks and cut-up pants. The injured man put on his hat, scarf then gloves and started to open the cabin door with a slow creak and peeked out.

The wind tried to blow the door back.

Ichigo held fast and avoided it slamming into anything but it was so damn cold! Maybe colder than yesterday but that probably wasn’t a fair comparison on his part. He hadn’t seen Grimmjow outside right away, who’d probably yell him back in the door right away, so Ichigo went out! Pulling the log cabin’s door closed behind himself with a ‘clack’ and careful that he actually shut it well he turned to face out and giggled when he realized that there was a little more snow stacked up now and he was standing on a shoveled path with a ton of footprints that stomped it down to snowy ice. There were four and a half feet of snow on either side and Ichigo used his hands to ball snow and set a couple little snowmen on top of one wall. He found a stick and some little rocks to make eyes, noses and smiles. There wasn’t enough of the stick for arms but that was ok. Well next he started to follow the many footprints along the main shoveled path with a careful pace. His leg hurt a lot more than it should because he’d not taken the pain killers, he just didn’t want to be drowsy yet. The tangerine-haired and by now scruffy-jawed man made his way out far enough to realize that the footprints mostly went off down another path and that there was another building. Right! He’d seen that before. Memory jogged Ichigo went down that shoveled path limping and looking around. There were some wood scraps and a wider area with- He gasped with a little step back when he noticed a section of deer hung on a low tripod of logs dripping blood into a pan. Oh…well…that was jarring but not unusual for someone like his host he guessed to be living mostly off the cold northern land on his own. Ichigo continued toward the multi-purpose storage shed and noticed that he could see some light under the door. Oh Grimmjow was probably in there cutting up supper he guessed. That was alright. Ichigo nudged the door open and-

There was Grimmjow indeed and he was pulling the _brain_ out of something’s partly meaty skull with a hatchet after knocking the _eyeballs_ and tongue out… The shed was sort of warm and the stuff hanging around it was well…antlers and tools plenty. The bearded man’s head snapped immediately toward the opened shed door when he heard sound with a reactive squeezing grasp on the hatchet and ready to drop the skull. Then he realized it wasn’t a problem and someone hadn’t listened to him very well.

Unfortunately Ichigo saw the brain matter leaking out of whatever animal skull that was in a sloppy pink soup and it all plopped into a cup with a wet slap…next to some eyeballs and a severed tongue. That was just about the most disconcerting thing ever… He blinked, teetering for a moment then fainted.

As tired of trouble as he got, Grimmjow couldn’t deny a slight satisfaction in this ‘I told you so’ moment. As he was pausing his work to carry the other man back inside Grimmjow did notice the tiny snowmen on the snow wall beside the path close to the cabin; he paused with a careful hold on his unconscious guest to pick up a head that had fallen off of one and put it back on gently, then took Ichigo inside.

Ichigo woke up back-down on the couch in the cabin with a few bumps and scrapes extra to compliment the raging pain through his body but mostly his leg. He started to realize upon waking that it wasn’t just latent pain but Grimmjow was sitting on the floor beside the couch sewing up his wounds and removing staples with the aid of medical tape to keep the wounds closed. “Oooow..!” If it weren’t for the pain Ichigo’s first focus would have been the fact that the other man had stripped his pants off…

“Hush.” Grimmjow croaked, trying to focus on removing the staples and sewing stitches. He wasn’t the best at this but they would be stronger than the staples Ichigo’s fall had torn out. Despite that the wounds didn’t look like they were getting worse.

Ichigo huffed and tried not to pay attention to his host sewing up his leg. There was no way to be fully distracted. The tunic and undershirt on him Grimmjow had left alone and made sure private areas were still covered, but Ichigo’s hands still moved down and held over those to make sure the tunic didn’t shift. Suddenly Ichigo remembered why he’d passed out. “What were you doing?!”

“I waste _nothing_.” Not even brains.

“Uugh…”

“That tunic and the inside of the bag your head is on were tanned with _brains_. It’s the only way to make them naturally _that_ soft.”

Ichigo stopped talking long enough to rethink and for Grimmjow to finish with the stitches; it was just hard to think about butchering animals. The injured man only started vocalizing again when he felt something coat the outside of his wounds. “Ooouch!”

Grimmjow finished dressing the wounds as gently as he could; he didn’t need to retell the other man that the pain medication would be a good idea now.

“You…didn’t cook brains…eyeballs and…the tongue in the food right?”

“No.”

“Good. I don’t like jokes. My leg looks fine right..?”

“It’s fine. You will lose it if you keep walking around.”

Ichigo scowled at the other man. “What else am I supposed to do?”

Impressively Grimmjow didn’t look sympathetic. “Rest. Ask for help.” He was about to wrap and bandage things when the injured man he was tending to shooed him out of irritation.

“I’m not a _baby_.”

Grimmjow stared at his guest with a brow up.

Ichigo looked like he got a little more irritated by that. “Oh, gimmie that, and go away…” He took the bandaging supplies away from the other man and some of the stuff Grimmjow actually put closer so that he could reach it before moving off.

As easy as it would be easy to just refuse, Grimmjow moved off.

Ichigo finished his own dressing; it looked and felt just fine when he was done. He smelled like salt and herbs and wondered about the salve and its ingredients again. The soft flowing leather of the brain tanned buckskin tunic on him rubbed against his skin in places…

Grimmjow had turned a spare radio on and tuned it to pick up a far-away music station at a low volume before bringing it over to the man on the couch. “Off before you fall asleep.” He left a mug of fresh water on top of a stump he’d set up like an end table by the couch.

Kiddish irritation turned into a sweet delight as Ichigo put the radio on the stump too. After taking medication for the pain, finishing his mug of water a short while later a very drowsy Ichigo elevated his injured leg on the couch carefully while watching the fire and happy to listen to music. Using the inside-out bag as a pillow the whole time the injured man was pretty drowsy, as expected, and found it impossible to stay awake while in great comfort. He fell asleep for the rest of the afternoon.

For a long while Grimmjow was careful not to wake his guest, he did turn off the radio and covered the man up with the wool and uncommon fur blanket. Into the hours of evening though it was Grimmjow again who gently shook the other man’s shoulder to awaken him and nudged Ichigo’s hand to give him some warmed water refilled in the mug. “Painkillers again, it’s been long enough.” To keep up with the pain. It would be worse to let the other man sleep and wake up in agony.

With a groggy ‘hmm’ Ichigo turned looking for the box which he needed help getting to by the light of the fire, it fell on the floor once and his host picked it up for him and waited until he’d taken the pills to go away again. “You’re drugging me…” the injured man teased groggily, getting up to relieve himself.

Wearing just his johns and socks Grimmjow scrunched his face and walked off. He was tired too! Too tired to smartly refute sleepy jabber.

After going to the bathroom Ichigo noticed that his host was messing with something backlit over by the bed. The injured man yawned on his way back to the couch and when he got there stretched out under the blanket as he eyed the fire in its place casting shadows and warmth. The rest of the cabin was pretty much dark. Who could ever stay awake with a coziness like that fire close during the night? He must have been sleeping for a long time… Wait a moment…his feet were _toasty_ and he realized that somehow there were the socks on them. He wiggled his toes carefully. He hadn’t put those on. Smiling Ichigo peeked over the back of the couch like a little spy.

Grimmjow was done messing with a backlit watch and just flopping over to go back to bed. He’d woken himself up to wake up this guest fellow for medication. Somebody knew a thing or two. Thanks to this man the fire was still burning safely too and Grimmjow barely got any of that warmth across the room. On his bed there were a few woolen blankets over the bedframe acting as a mattress that he covered with a sheet. He slept under another wool and fur blanket. The bed creaked and sagged a bit, makeshift mattress held up by springs as the bearded fellow made himself comfortable again and happily tried to go back to sleep. Just as an exhausted Grimmjow was falling asleep he felt a gentle hand touch his shoulder and weight behind himself sag the bed a little more. The hand didn’t go away as he tried to ignore it but an arm came around his torso and held onto him. A forehead nudged up against his neck and shins gently touched the backs of his legs. Instead of getting angry Grimmjow just left it alone because he was warmer all of the sudden and soon fell asleep in great comfort. Where he normally saw nightmarish yellow eyes, piles of fetid corpses wasting away and sometimes worse, instead he had _good_ dreams…dreams of drinking beer and mead, laying on velvet buckskin and snow melting and grass growing, of gardens and fresh foods, herbs and all that was green. Verdant and pleasant dreams.

Read ALL my fanfictions on ArchiveofOurOwn.org. Art via: DeviantArt.com/FicticiousDelicious or FicticiousDelicious.Tumblr.com

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Grænir Draumar - Green Dreams  
> (I wanted to use a word for 'verdant' but I don't think there is a word known for that.)


	6. Chapter Sixth - Nakinn

_Panter af Norðanvindinum_

Chapter Sixth – “Nakinn”

Come morning Grimmjow had forgotten that anyone had perhaps climbed into bed with him the night before, but as he woke up from a deep and heavy sleep with the sun’s light and warmth coming in the window behind him, the log cabin was _particularly_ warm…warmer than usual for freezing winter mornings. It was not insulated as well as a modern house. Also he was usually never up so late; slow to wake but so damn refreshed, he’d slept sounder than the logs of this place ever would, but he realized he’d awoken because someone was talking- No. _Singing_. The bearded man’s form jerked in surprise but quickly realized that the voice was _not_ singing to him specifically among the sounds of showering water. While it was no doubt his _guest_ showering and amusing himself, Grimmjow had already yanked the covers over his head and tried to go back to sleep but he was unable to block it out. Wait a second… Just about ready to curse this, Grimmjow threw off his covers and started getting up. “Don’t get your leg wet like that! What are you doing?!”

“WOAH!” Scared shitless Ichigo not only fumbled his soap into the trough he was standing in, but crouched down to hide his naked ass quick enough that from the sudden movement bolts of pain shot up through his leg as shallow soapy water lapped at his ankles in the bottom of the trough. “Oow…” The shower was still running over his head.

Grimmjow was across the cabin in a few seconds, almost taking the tangled blankets off his bed with him as he hurried and when the bearded man arrived at the trough tub he tugged the chain to stop the shower, reached into the tub and yanked the other man out. Just no tact.

Shivering and shaking his head and rubbing at his eyes to get the water off so that he could see Ichigo was fighting the manhandling a bit because this was pretty uncomfortable. He was naked, cold, startled and could barely see. “OUCH! Let go!”

“You can’t get this wet!” Grimmjow snapped up the towel this man had sitting aside for when he got out and immediately started to hastily dry Ichigo off head to toe in that order. “It will-” He was crouched face to face with the lower half of Ichigo’s body and there had been stitches he’d sewn himself but…now there were carefully taped down segments of latex probably cut from gloves covering up the wounds.

“Don’t touch!” Ichigo stepped one cautionary pace back, covering up sensitive bits with both hands and blinking away a drop or two left of water on his face.

Grimmjow slowly rose out of the crouch feeling so foolish about doing that to his guest that he was actually angry under the skin, outwardly he looked just surprised. The large room in the cabin got _really_ awkward and quiet for a minute while they stared at each other. Finally he offered the towel back which Ichigo kind of snatched away.

Ichigo was in control of his temper but he was still perturbed and wrapped his waist up in time to realize that his host was drifting away.

Not sulking or moping Grimmjow just distracted himself by putting his bed back together, making breakfast, actually frying venison instead of making it into a soup. Somewhere he’d gotten some large mushrooms, probably out of cans, and served minced and seasoned venison in their caps.

It was hard to be any amount mad at his host after a breakfast like that, Ichigo found. “Mmm!” He’d already eaten all of his mushroom caps and venison and sat comfortably still in just a towel on the couch with a freshly dressed leg that he’d done before breakfast and after shaving.

Grimmjow sat quietly on the other end of the couch eating a bit slower, however he definitely noticed his guest’s delight with the food. There was really nowhere else to sit and eat in the cabin other than the bed and he didn’t want to sit there so here was the only other place.

Ichigo scooted a cushion closer to his host and leaned back on the couch comfortably, waiting for Grimmjow to finish his food.

It seemed like the bearded man noticed the encroachment and slowed down for just a bite’s time, watching Ichigo out of the corner of his eyes. Grimmjow finished his mushrooms and almost stood up when his guest grabbed his shoulder and he sat back down without intending to. What… Grimmjow turned his head and felt the pressure of two hands resting on the top of one thigh and saw Ichigo’s face coming a little closer. He froze and watched the slow advance with a calm sort of stare and slowly started to react. Just the slightest part to lips framed with blue facial hairs and eyelids softening eyes down to half their size- and he might’ve kissed the other man if the longwave radio hadn’t started to hiss obnoxiously. Grimmjow woke up from a charmed trance and pushed Ichigo’s hands off his leg and got up to go to the radio off in a corner.

Ichigo had tipped over a little and laid across the couch with a light growl. God fucking damnit.

Grimmjow thumped the radio once and started tuning it with a frown since the static was hard to clear up but eventually he could at least understand the voice through it.

The mercantile’s owner, Renji’s scratchy voice came through coarsely and got a little more fine-tuned by the radio operator on Grimmjow’s end. “Hsssss- Hello? Panther, you getting me? Over.”

Grimmjow didn’t have to tell Ichigo to back off because the other man wasn’t coming over to bother him. “This is Panther, yes. Over.”

“Fuck. I can’t hear you well. Over.”

“Sorry, radio needs work. What’d you want? Over.”

“Hey man…remember that _other channel?_ Over.”

“Yes. Over.” Grimmjow immediately changed the frequency over to one that he used to use before other people were given the one that he and Renji had just been on. He waited a second.

Ichigo had sat up on the couch and was putting on the buckskin tunic and smoothing it down as he took off his towel; he was listening but not bothering the other man.

Grimmjow started talking again. “Dread, you getting me? Over.”

“Holy fuck man…” Renji started with a slight pause as his voice hissed through the new frequency, “…Nel, that nice baker girl went missing this morning. This is an emergency. Have you been out today at all? Over.”

“No.” Grimmjow started to sound very unhappy. “Why is it an emergency? She might be outside for a walk. Over.”

“No man. The door was kicked in and her house was a mess. Espada’s freaking out. I’ll vouch for you if you’ve said you’ve been at home all morning but you better stay away from everyone. They’re just looking for someone to blame. Over.”

Grimmjow looked stoic and unsurprised that people would turn on him without anyone else better to blame. A reclusive guy that followed old ways, lived in a cabin, hunted and barely talked to anyone was too easy. That could easily explain why no one else had contacted him yet over the radio and not to mention it was early and people didn’t think clearly in the morning when they’d just gotten up.

“Panther? Hey? Over.”

“I’m here. Over.”

Renji’s static-riddled voice continued, “Will you look for her..? In your neck of the woods. I know it’s a risk to ask you to be out with this thing going on but Nel’s really nice to all of us so she doesn’t deserve to be lost and scared or something. If you can’t find her I don’t know who can. Please? Over.”

Grimmjow was already thinking about doing that but he took a minute longer to consider it. That was a risk, a huge risk if he found her in an awkward state this town would flay him alive. However…the undesirable idea of being burned by the people was less important than doing the correct thing. As the old ways required, a person took action when they could take action. Grimmjow lived and died by those ways. “You better vouch for me or I will tan your exotic hide _happily_. I’ll look for her. Over.”

Ichigo giggled behind his hands from the couch.

“Haha! I know you would. I won’t shirk. I’ll be checking in sometime. Over and out.”

“Ok. Over, out.” Grimmjow was putting down the receiver and switching back frequencies. Something felt wrong in the air.

“A mystery!” Ichigo piped.

“You’re staying _HERE_ ,” Grimmjow sniped, turning his eyes sternly toward his injured guest who still needed to rest and recover.

Well his host looked unamused by his comment but he knew why…he’d loosely chosen to define ‘stay here’ yesterday, as if ‘here’ was the whole acre of land; this time would probably be the same. Ichigo huffed.

As Grimmjow saw that same look surface in the other man’s eyes he shook his head, knowing that he would seriously need to bribe this guy to make Ichigo listen. “When I find her I’ll ask that she bake you another pastry. So STAY. HERE.”

“Two.”

Grimmjow’s face twitched; this greedy little shit.

“One for me, one for you.”

The bearded man blinked feeling the vaguest amount bad for quick assumptions. He’d done it twice this morning. “…fine.” Letting his blue eyes drift off and scratching his beard he was starting to get himself ready to go out and look, first by pushing his bed aside and opening the trapdoor under it.

Ichigo’s eyes watched over the back of the couch. He watched his host take out of the secret space in the floor a fur set of clothes that were _the purest white_ like driven snow, a dusky white leather bag, a different compound bow…not the one off of the wall, and arrows in a grey quiver… When it looked like Grimmjow was about to change into his clothes Ichigo turned around politely and sat, staring up at the bow mounted to the wall with arrows and the moon’s phases in silvery design behind them. So…that one was special? No wonder it was out of reach.

Heavily Grimmjow’s feet shifting minutes later told of him packing his bag with supplies and moving across the cabin’s main room. He went toward the front door and set his bow and quiver down while he stood by the shut door. He got his boots on and fitted them with a covering of sections of the white fur and pulled the dusky white leather of the end of his pants over the tops of the fur to keep out snow. His torso was covered up by the same white fur in a coat with a hood that was much tighter than his bear fur coat, and this one had something’s long black-tipped tail sewn on the spine of the coat… The matching tail was long enough to touch the back of Grimmjow’s thighs. He put an extra knife and bottle of water into his coat so his body could keep it from freezing and started to fit his hands into dusky white leather gloves before tying things up efficiently.

Ichigo was looking at the man by the door and started to realize that the white fur had just the faintest of grey spots that he hadn’t noticed before. The injured man’s eyes opened widely as he recognized the patterning and looked down at the blanket he’d been sleeping under on the couch for the past few nights… “Did you… _poach_ these..?”

“It was a mistake.” It seems his guest understood how exceptionally illegal it was to hunt big snow cats on this continent. There were none left in these woods because of one man with an insatiable hunger for his prey. They had been his favorite, but he’d only realized how much he felt a kinship with them once they were all gone…and he was alone. Espada didn’t know what he’d done; it was his guilt and just his. Grimmjow finished with a few ties attaching the lean bag of few supplies to his thigh and put on his quiver and started to check every arrow and then check his bow carefully. The only way to fix things was to never make a mistake like poaching again, and to start watching out for living things. To treat them like all life was equal. To wear the skin of the panther. To live as an intelligent apex predator. To take only that which needed taking and so to lift the curse of hunger and destructive desires. Fear no regression and fear no dark, damning future as the hunter stands naked before the truth.

Able to seriously feel the potential danger of the task ahead now, Ichigo got off of the couch and walked as quickly as he could toward the other man’s position and as soon as Grimmjow’s bow was out of the way he wrapped his arms around the big furry torso and hugged him like he’d been due forgiveness – whether the bearded man wanted it or not. “Come back with the pastries.” The fur was soft and warm.

Grimmjow’s arms were bowed away for moments until he heard what his guest wanted and patted the man’s shoulder before carefully pushing Ichigo’s body back. He turned his eyes toward the bed he’d moved and the trapdoor that was left open; there was just storage down there. While he was at that spot he’d attached a tattered rug to the back of the door that could flop down over it when it was closed. Grimmjow pointed with the end of his light-colored compound bow. “If trouble… _hide_. Don’t come out until I’m back.” He stuck his rifle from near the door into his guest’s hands. “If you can’t aim fire it close. Pull that lever back hard and let go to reload.”

Hazelnut eyes tilted down and with more apparent worry Ichigo’s hands shook to hold this thing.

Grimmjow looked straight at the other man then put a hand on Ichigo’s head, ruffled the tangerine hair with the vaguest smile and opened the cabin door with that hand when he was done. He was sorry that this man was involved but the least that he could do was offer protection. If he didn’t return there were definitely enough resources to keep his guest alive at least.

The door shutting with him on the inside of it must have been the way it felt before your family members left for war…only he wasn’t given a chance to say much of anything. Ichigo stood there staring at the flat panel for some time before he resolved himself to the facts. He was safe here, for now. Even though Grimmjow had said otherwise…this sounded serious and he might not come back.

Read ALL my fanfictions on ArchiveofOurOwn.org. Art via: DeviantArt.com/FicticiousDelicious or FicticiousDelicious.Tumblr.com

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Nakinn - Naked


	7. Chapter Seventh - Lokaveiði

_Panter af Norðanvindinum_

Chapter Seventh – “Lokaveiði”

Looking around briefly outside Grimmjow was tying his blue hair back with a strip of leather, inhaling the cold air calmly. Depending on the wind, tracking in deep snow could be a huge pain…and this was all going to be deep; that four and a half feet of snow hadn’t just disappeared overnight. His frozen north was true to itself. The man retrieved other handmade snowshoes which came from the shed. At a glance of the thermometer on an outer wall of the shed the temperature was freezing; with windchill it could be a few brutal degrees colder. Just as he was walking back to the main shoveled path with them he heard the cabin door open and turned. In socks, a tunic and roughly wrapped in a fur blanket his guest was limping out into the freezing weather with half of an apple turnover wrapped in waxy paper and a folded piece of lined paper.

Ichigo held these things out as he was determined to _make_ his chance to say something before his kind host left.

Grimmjow dropped his bow and snowshoes to the side and walked briskly toward the other man. “What are you doing?!” A gust of wind followed after his voice and blew flurries of loose snow across the shoveled path from the sides. Grimmjow exhaled a long breath that the wind swept away in a stream. Some snow flurried around them and missed pieces of his blue hair blew too. “It’s too cold for you to be out here.”

Ichigo’s body tended to agree and he shivered but as they reached each other he pressed the two things he’d brought into the other man’s hands. He pushed back from Grimmjow so the man wouldn’t think he was trying to follow him. For a moment with wind carrying his pluming breath away in a stream too, Ichigo watched Grimmjow’s dusky white leather-covered hands grasping the items; the underside of the gloves was a black leather likened to paw-pads.

The blue-haired man tipped the items into one hand and used his free one to touch Ichigo’s cheek and pull the blanket’s edges more tightly around the shivering man. “Go back inside,” he mentioned calmly.

“Don’t let the gods take you,” Ichigo insisted stubbornly. He shivered a lot more but reached out of the cover of the blanket to grasp the white furs of Grimmjow’s coat and shook his head, “Don’t let them.”

Grimmjow’s eyes softened just this once and he reached into his clothes and took off a necklace which he usually wore underneath of his clothing – a feather, fur, wood and stone pendant on a thick leather string. He put it around Ichigo’s head and gently brushed the string past the other man’s ears. “They couldn’t hold me.”

Ichigo swallowed, still shivering yes, and bowed his head with a little smile about the necklace. “I believe that.”

Grimmjow ruffled the shivering and injured man’s hair again before regaining his usual stoicism.

Sensing that it was really time to leave this up to Grimmjow, Ichigo went back inside quickly before the chill had huge effects but he shut the door slow. So this might be it…it was terrifying to think that he _could_ lose someone so kind and someone that he wanted to see again…but he wouldn’t lose him! Would he…

Grimmjow had watched Ichigo back off, now he was alone. Sort of. The man’s firm stoicism fully returned. It was not a man’s choice when his time did arrive; it was only his choice what he was doing until his time. Realizing that the given half of a pastry was warmed he ate it as he walked to the edge of his property with his gear clutched. The other, a note had runes on it that meant ‘read later’. No wonder his guest was so attached to him…Ichigo knew the old ways well enough to at least write their runes. He put on his snowshoes when his shoveled path ended outside of his property’s fence and gate. For once he’d shared the company of someone who secretly believed the same way he did. These were…unexpected gifts which he could easily take to his last wintery hunt.

The northern wind howled. The weather did not intend to make this trial easy.

Grimmjow ensured that his white furry hood was up and got on top of the four and half feet of snow with snowshoes dispersing his weight and headed toward the snow plains between his home and Espada. He would search outside of town. By himself he walked through the plains among the merciless beating winds searching for unusual tracks. If the baker woman had left Espada there would be proof out here somewhere. Snow blew up into his face. His breath plumed hugely. The flakes stuck to and gathered in his beard constantly, which felt like it was freezing. Even though he wore thermal johns under all of this it was still damn cold, especially on the extremities. Grimmjow tied a furry flap of his coat over his mouth. This damn wind though…it would cover tracks with snow, but if he hurried he could find clues. Humans were bound to leave big marks. Sure enough a half an hour into his scouting and there were messy human tracks slogging and dragging through the deep snow of the plains and the shape of the feet were headed away from Espada. Nothing else like it was around. Grimmjow couldn’t get detail but the actual compressed prints were wide like shoes and close together. This person was walking but unevenly.

Thus began the actual tracking now…half of a predator’s success in cold winter was hinged upon this skill. You couldn’t catch prey that you could not find. The only reason Grimmjow could imagine that someone would stumble through feet of snow in the plains toward dangerous wintery woods and avoid the perfectly good plowed section of road that went partway out of town was because they might be hiding something or following something. Judging by the increase of gap in compressed shoeprints, as Grimmjow started to follow them, the person had been increasingly in a hurry. Here and there a crumbling of snow had fallen in the deep path left by this person and sometimes crumbles of snow covered up the prints but the four-foot deep path itself was super clear… Grimmjow wondered how anyone in the town could have missed this lead; obviously they had because no extra prints followed these.

The breath of winter and hiss of the brutal north were overhead as if crying out to the dead.

The bearded man made sure to look out for anything dropped in the snow along the path as he followed it. The northerly wind was unfortunately blowing right on his face and in his eyes. It was strong enough to make the arrows in his quiver lean back and the black-tipped tail of his coat trail out behind him. Squinting Grimmjow pulled his white furry hood down a little more and it covered up the top of his face; cut-out and plastic covered peepholes for his eyes let him see ahead. Through a massive snow plain, a part of his charge, a blue-eyed and white panther stalked the north wind. After walking a ways toward the woods Grimmjow started to recognize his own land a half a mile toward the left – west through snow dusted winds; this trail he tracked went straight on by and toward the woods though. There was something curious about the path through the snow that he was following as he got up beside where he could tell that his property was closer – _handprints_. Handprints and swipes out toward the left sides of the path. He walked a little more and narrowly avoided falling into a huge flattened mess along the left side. There came a body-sized collapse and a huge flattened and snowy mess where someone had been struggling. A dusting of snow covered this. Awesome clue…but bad news. At least there was no blood.

The howl of the wind picked up into more of a cry that sounded through the plains, toward valleys and the mountains.

With his light-colored compound bow and a dull grey carbon arrow in his other hand both readied, Grimmjow licked his lips with a very strong concern and carefully scanned his surroundings right where he was at. There were no extra tracks leading toward this position from any other place. Nothing besides wisps and twisting devils of snow across the plains moved and the gentle sway of evergreens ahead into the woods. The vast mountainous ranges that surrounded these places he knew so well stood up tall in the very far distance watching the predator. Judging his character. His gods were watching too. Grimmjow wouldn’t let himself succumb; he had to be sturdy. It seemed like a never-ending task that he’d been at for so long… So the person whom had made these shoeprints was under attack by something that had managed to get to them without leaving extra tracks. The path continued toward the woods and he followed it. Grimmjow’s sternly discerning eyes lifted. Perhaps it was just too late, but he would still investigate.

The northern wind blew over the tops of the trees, scattering snow sometimes.

Normally it bothered him less to enter this place, a place among evergreens of pine and spruce where he was less exposed and could blend. Today just felt ominous. As the bearded man beheld the rest of the trampled shoeprint path it had become messier since that wide spot, messier and the sides of the path were swiped and crumbled but there were definitely two sets of shoeprints now. No one had made the turn to run toward his cabin from the path. His cloudy breath leaked out of his lips as he crouched and used an arrow to reach a lady’s-sized slipper from a spot down in the path and brought it along; the trees nearest had snow knocked off and some of its branches pulled off. As he moved into the woods the black-tipped tail on his coat hooked into a loop close to his body so that it couldn’t drag and he folded back the flaps of fur over his eyes and mouth since the wind was broken by the tall trees. The clues felt too convenient, but at least he guessed that this was likely Nel, _and_ someone else that was not treating her kindly. Grimmjow understood that Nel was not afraid of him and she knew where he lived. She would have tried to get help, hence the struggling; she’d probably screamed at the top of her lungs. It made this man angry to think that while he gave up vigil and slept so well and good this morning that this woman was suffering greatly so nearby. Still he looked stoic, it helped him focus. The world in the woods was quieter than one might imagine, sometimes surprising with the pieces of snow sliding off the evergreens, the occasional skitter of an animal or the grunt of bears and other creatures too hearty to hibernate…even the snow was shallower, but the northern panther was known as the quietest…

Grimmjow walked low, hushed and vigilant. He was always a short distance away from the messy path and shoeprints he was following. He smelled the air, the strange and hard to describe scent of cold and pine and freshness of the north… He could smell the smoke from the wind blowing it probably from his very own home. He could move without disturbing the birds. Creatures of the forest today were lucky for this predator needed their meat and skins _not_ on this venture… The white panther’s coat blended him into the snowy environment, his bow and arrow in his black-padded leathery hands floated readily, and there in the trees Grimmjow crept increasingly swifter with a crouched jog tracking for a mile as the snow became only a couple feet deep below his snowshoes. He disturbed nothing save for his prints and breathing the air.

A bird or two called through the air and flew overhead and away.

Coming into a thicker grove of pine and spruce, their rich scents filling his nose, Grimmjow froze quickly at a point where he saw something. The woods here were very disturbed. His blue eyes angled down. There were more shoeprints ahead of him but not just in the line he had been tracking. Suspicious, Grimmjow picked up a handful of snow and made it into chunks and lowered himself to hide. Tossing the snow ahead in a scattering gesture one by one the pieces landed; a few in particular set off a metal clank near the new shoeprints. The jaws of a metal trap snapped shut just out of the snow enough to show. That could have been his foot in that… Grimmjow carefully skirted around looking for more traps. He found three close together and all within sight of the obvious shoeprint path he’d been tracking. These other traps were two snares and another foothold. The saddest was the foothold for a bear but it had been stepped on, sprung, by a rabbit. As one could imagine…the animal was _halved_. After cutting the snares Grimmjow studied the old blood of the rabbit on the snow and he prodded the lifeless, stiff-frozen creature. It was a very sad clue. For an animal to be this frozen it would have had to have been here for maybe a day. The traps had been set previously…obviously the people on the main shoeprint path knew how to avoid them – or just one of them did at least. While at home Grimmjow had been paying attention to his guest and not going outside so someone had snuck into the woods and done all this… The blue-haired and bearded man got a little angrier.

Snow sprinkled down from the upper branches of the spruce and pines…

Taking precautions, Grimmjow traveled around springing traps left and right and cutting others down as he followed the shoeprints of the two people – regardless of how much slower it made him. He did not want to find more unnecessarily slain creatures. The predator tracking his quarry made his way roughly in the same direction of the path of shoeprints for another slow mile and while he spoiled traps on his way he noted how far away the traps tended to be…which was always within sight of the shoeprints – a pattern.

If the spruce and pines could talk they might’ve helped their counterpart on his way. All were of one.

The shoeprints had been snaking through the trees. Increasingly finding no bait for animals Grimmjow became _certain_ that the traps were for protection, which meant the expectation of stalking… Many little animal prints were heading away from the shoeprints, probably fleeing. Good for them, stay away from dangerous humans. However not all of the animals escaped easily. Ahead more of this reckless trapping had caught a deer, a fox and another rabbit. The fox and rabbit were dead and partially frozen, but the deer was still very alive in a snare. Grimmjow calmly used his knife to cut the deer free; he restrained it gently while cleaning its agitated leg with snow. It limped away with its liberator uncertain of its fate. The discerning panther watched it go. He would have to come back and restore the woods, to remove all of the traps and to skin and burn the dead animals so that their lives were not spoiled. There was always so much to do.

Little pieces of snow flecked off of trees more with the wind. Without being in sun it was definitely still freezing even though afternoon was in full swing. There were birds hopping around on the snowy cover over the ground.

This northern land was always incredibly cold and snowy so hearty animals skittering around and not hibernating were normal, but there were tracks of more animals than Grimmjow felt like he usually saw after such dense snowfall. It just made him more determined to multitask and upset every trap he could find. Just after cutting a few more snares his ears picked up some manmade sounds ahead – echoing. _A scream_. He looked at the shoeprints. They were not going the same way as the sound seemed however, Grimmjow continued following the _shoeprints_ ; a sound could bounce in so many strange ways in the woods. Finding less and less traps, and after stopping briefly for a drink and jerky, Grimmjow came to a point where ahead the trees were very sparse and there was a frozen gully, covered up by snow right now, he would cross it to get to- His eyes flared a little sighting a woman across the river stripped of her shirt and chained to a pine tree. _‘Damnit…’_ He wouldn’t have imagined this to be what he’d face.

Among messy tangles of green hair she shivered, tears from her eyes froze to her face. Chain links around her and the tree trunk held down her legs and chest, fortunate to be left in a brassiere. Her hands were tied behind her back against the coarse pine tree, feet tied too under a long ruffly green skirt, in secondary restraints.

Grimmjow bristled. So this was the grand finale of traps? Freezing a woman to death as bait. _Disgusting_. He’d come up toward this area and slunk under the covering branches of a spruce tree with minimal disturbance and started looking through a scope he unpacked from the bag on his thigh and chewing a piece of jerky to help calm himself. In a more open area like this frozen gully a scope was very useful. Spying like this was awkward, even though the baker woman didn’t know. At least it was just her shirt missing…but she was still going to get serious frostbite in freezing weather. A trap with a goddamned timer. Her skin was pinkish and hadn’t lost its color yet so Grimmjow knew that she’d _just_ been set out. Worst case: the other person knew Grimmjow’s progress and had waited. Best case: they had been too busy to do this until now. Regardless, Grimmjow sought the gleam of a rifle or the giveaway of gear or movement through the scope in all directions. Nothing. Frustrated at that he looked closer and realized that on his side of the frozen gully there was a ton of disturbed snow. Traps again he bet. There was going to be no easy way through this.

Away at some distance and place unknown, malicious eyes watched the crossing point.

Grimmjow dug into the snow under the tree and camped in a hidey hole while looking around with the scope more. As much as he needed to help the poor baker woman quickly he couldn’t just run out there. He had come to this tree specifically because some of the others on his side were trapped so far as he could tell. Whomever had done this was expecting someone to find them. With a very particular eye the circular and measured vision of the scope swept over snow, evergreens, rocks and raises in the land – looking again. Grimmjow was incredibly wary to be snuck up on while looking around and checked near himself repeatedly; he swallowed chewed jerky and any unnecessary emotions. Still the vision of the scope turned up nothing suspicious in the- _wait_. Wait a minute… Many yards past the sad woman’s position Grimmjow noticed a bird flapping away from something. There was a fox on the ground scurrying out of the trees too but it wasn’t following the bird. Perhaps nature had betrayed a reckless inhabitant. The predator’s vision through the scope started to reverse the animal’s path. The fox had run from a lumpy snow-colored cover laid over something that just barely breathed or shifted in the snow. There was a glint of metal. _‘Got you…’_ Grimmjow recognized hunting camouflage under branches and between trees and the end of a rifle stuck out of the front.

The shooter was turning away from the animals and straight ahead to watch the tree line of the gully again. Their position was _many yards_ away, almost directly behind their captive’s tree and facing the frozen gully.

The bearded man wanted to assume that there was only one other person out here because of the shoeprints he’d followed. Espada was remote in the true wintertime, there weren’t many year-round residents that visited the woods in this season, hence the profit of selling extra game to the butcher. One certain piece of shit about this though was that his bow wasn’t going to be able to hit the shooter from this distance. Without the damn trees in his way maybe… At a disadvantage because he definitely wasn’t out of a typical rifle’s effective range and bullets would be more accurate through trees Grimmjow didn’t curse that he’d left his rifle to protect his guest – surprisingly. He would work this. Huffing a little Grimmjow’s blue eyes glanced at the baker woman who was starting to wilt and very quiet. Lowering his scope he ducked down as he saw the shooter slowly turning the rifle to scan the gully. He didn’t know what kind of rifle that was, and waited a long minute then peeked through snow with the scope again. This tree and deep snow was excellent cover and he wasn’t spotted as the shooter scanned in another direction. Fuck this, plan time. Grimmjow crawled backward until he was out of sight of the frozen gully where the trees were thicker. He found dead branches and logs and the like, watching out for more traps and less stealthy now that he knew where his prey was at. The tracking was over. Now it was time to outwit and _hunt_. With careful positioning Grimmjow set up piles of dense natural things close to the tree line of the frozen gully. After a moment of mental preparation to focus the man started running behind and between trees snatching up and hucking things from the piles into the middle where the snow was disturbed and he suspected traps.

Left and right came the sounds of harsh footholds snapping steel jaws shut and flopping around out from under the snow.

Nel looked up with a few small breaths, realizing that someone was across the gully.

Even though this made him obvious Grimmjow’s white furs and blending leathers made him extremely hard to notice in the snowy evergreens.

There was some indiscriminate gunfire into the tree line. The shot grouping would have been messy and slow.

Grimmjow hauled ass from one position to the next to try and avoid a bullet as he threw more shit to clear a path or give himself the best chance at least.

The baker woman was crying out, for help probably but the words were a bit garbled by all of the other stuff.

When Grimmjow finished what he’d call a good round of peppering the grounds ahead he was tired and sunk in the snow next to a tree…and well…he was shot once in the lower leg. It burned. It hurt _a lot_. The bullet was still in there. The huffing man sniffed at the pain and blood that was controlled by his clothes and the furs over, which he tightened, and while catching his breath used his scope to look around the tree he was at for the shooter who was currently looking for him.

Gunfire had stopped just a few moments prior.

All was pretty quiet except for Nel’s continued yelling, curiously it wasn’t, ‘please help me, please dear god help me I’m freezing to death’ and more to the tune of, “Don’t kill him! Please don’t kill him! Grimmjow leave, _get help!_ ”

Grimmjow grit his teeth. There was no way in hell she should have known it was him over here. Regardless there was no time to fetch help. He held on tightly to his gear and bolstered his nerves. He had an idea. The blue-haired and bearded man all covered in white furs moved to a point where he could take aim and shoot the snow-laden tops of the evergreens just across the river. He shot twice very quick and accurately and as the arrows disturbed and broke branches snow started to cascade down, more toppling off of branch after branch of more than one tree as they sailed. The snow came down in wisps and chunks and sprayed a white flecked cover between shooter and what they thought was their prey. Grimmjow bolted forward from his side of the gully, snowshoes stomping. His leg screamed so bad and while being fired at by a partially snow-blinded shooter he evaded a few bullets but an untouched trap snapped shut on the back of the snowshoe attached to his injured leg and he fell with a yell of pain and slammed into the snow between two other traps. In the dip of the gully another bullet or two went far overhead before noise stopped and the snow settled. Grimmjow wheezed clouds and ripped his boot out of the broken snowshoe. He kicked off the other one. Pain seared up and down his leg and made it hard to turn and crawl out of the minefield of foothold traps.

The baker woman was close enough to recognize Grimmjow, she cried in relief as the man in white furs gathered his bow and any loose arrows and stayed low but crawled toward her. Nel quickly noticed blood on the fur of one of his legs. “Oh no-”

“Ssht _shhh_ …” Grimmjow shushed quietly and whispered, bearded face looking pretty weary, as he was slowly crouch-walking up the other side of the gully and careful with his footing. “…don’t turn your head, just your eyes. Just look at me. Ok? Don’t say a word,” he whispered. The shooter probably couldn’t hear anything but he didn’t want to take a chance. He put on a release bracelet for his bow.

The woman had nodded nervously with her large grey eyes pinned to her rescuer. It wasn’t the worst thing to have a man staring at her without a shirt and in just a bra; the worst thing was being chained to this coarse-barked tree!

Several times Grimmjow thought his leg was going to give out but he forced himself to keep moving it. He tried to listen for anyone approaching but heard nothing; they were either silent or not moving.

The shooter did not attempt to get closer to find Grimmjow, they did however shoot Nel in the arm. Perhaps an impatient tactic to let the man know that they weren’t fucking around if their prey was still alive. They clearly suspected he might be.

When the bullet hit her in the arm Nel screamed, as she cried in pain blood from her peachy, trembling arm dripped on the ground. “Aaaa!”

Looking his usual stoic at the most Grimmjow was roiling mad under the surface. The man encroached a little bit more getting another arrow ready and able to tap Nel on the top of her foot with it. “Pst… Look at me,” he insisted.

The baker woman’s teary grey eyes turned up and she shivered uncontrollably.

“Pay attention to me. Not them.” Grimmjow refocused on where he was at. He could probably hit the shooter from the top of the rise out of this dip but not if they shot him in the head… The time between shots before had told him something important though: the shooter’s rifle was not automatic.

Gunfire crackled again and Nel screamed as a bullet nicked her shoulder. “Oh my god please…stop it!” She shifted her bare feet around a little to try and cope with the pain. The tight chains clinked. Her long skirt was snagged in her restraints. She squeezed her tied hands in fists behind her back.

Bristling angrily under his stoicism Grimmjow laid down and barely edged his scope up to get the shooter’s position. They were stupid. They hadn’t moved back yet. A bullet whizzed over his shoulder as it cut through snow, Grimmjow backed down fast. Whew…that was close.

The shooter was watching where Nel was looking because she was panicked.

“It’s Nnoitora…” Nel started to ramble quietly with trembling and dry lips; she obviously didn’t care if talking got her shot again, not after twice already. “He’s _horrible_. He asked me to poison you and I wouldn’t do it and I was going to tell someone and-”

“Hush. Talk later.” Grimmjow was touched by Nel’s concern but now was not the time. However that did explain the stupidity of the shooter. “Actually…did you see his gun?”

“A-a long gun. I don’t know guns.”

Grimmjow nodded, fair enough. He nocked an arrow, twenty-nine left, and laid on his belly and fired the arrow up in a far arc into the woods behind him. It sailed over the frozen gully’s ridge and struck a tree. By the time the shooter fired at his next position Grimmjow had moved over. He peeked again through the scope. Stupid or ballsy the shooter still had not jumped up but was still turning the rifle so the arrow had clearly missed.

Almost forgetting to breathe and shivering Nel watched the ranged duel nervously but eventually the shivering baker woman was too tired and cold to constantly stare at Grimmjow.

Grimmjow tried again. The arrow arched up over trees and came raining down and was lost in evergreen branches.

The shooter fired at the ridge again.

Moved already the hunter growled, checked and fired another arrow. Five more arrows and five more bullets. No one was dead yet…but Grimmjow’s accuracy was getting better… The next volleyed arrow Grimmjow shot hit a corner of the shooter’s camouflage tarp. He had a very limited amount of arrows but he demonstrated that eventually he would _not_ miss. Grimmjow peeked; the shooter was not yet nervous enough to move. A bullet went over Grimmjow’s head narrowly. With a calming breath out of the way he fired again like the last time but two arrows.

The shooter fired at the same place because their prey hadn’t moved but a short second later an arrow hit the tarp near the first and they flinched. If that wasn’t bad enough a second away from that _another_ arrow struck the tarp. Three.

Grimmjow was checking the alarmed shooter who now started to change positions. Grimmjow charged out of his position and dropped his scope but he couldn’t go back for it. He nocked an arrow on a limping charge over the rise and volleyed two arrows toward the shooter’s position before himself getting behind a tree. Grimmjow was shot at twice and both bullets missed. Feeling his heart thundering in his chest and leg throbbing pain the fur-clad and bearded man could also feel his sweat trickling down his neck. The white fur of his clothes made him hard to aim at as he bounded through the trees following the sound of the rifle, still being shot at and disturbing branches with arrows to create cascading snow cover in many places. His weapon was virtually silent.

Eventually when the shooter in black realized that they had no idea where their prey was at, because their opponent was blurred into the landscape and silent, they stopped firing as much and ran back toward the gully. The shooter was on the other side of the equation. Fearing the silent approach of a predator from the trees, a most primal fear, they took to firing blindly into the woods to cover a retreat.

Grimmjow was never prey to begin with. Human beings were one of land’s apex predators but this blue and bearded panther was at the very top of their kind. With a sharp eye he stalked the retreating shooter. He liked to hunt…he liked to catch his prey…he liked it _so_ much… Adrenaline surged as he slunk into position, predatory blue eyes watched from behind a fallen, snowy log…sunken into the drifts… He nocked an arrow, _breathed_ …and fired as the shooter approached Nel’s tree. Get fucked.

Hissing pain the shooter collapsed with a carbon arrow through the calf…the very same somewhere they’d shot the man in white furs.

That person wasn’t going to touch Nel. Placement was intentional. Grimmjow didn’t get up right away, feeling appropriately vengeful. He’d already thought about this, but he _wasn’t_ going to kill them, be it Nnoitora or otherwise. He was just going to _terrify_ them…and maybe make it impossible for them to go outside in snow ever again. The concealed panther waited until the person tried to get themselves up. Next he shot them in the forearm.

There was a flat-out scream and the masculine voice of it echoed far out into the woods. The rifle dropped out of their grasp and the shooter on their knees.

Grimmjow shot them in the hand.

The shooter, stuck with three arrows, yelled again and reeled in agony.

That was enough. Grimmjow ventured out of position and in trudging through the shallow snow without snowshoes he left drops of blood. The mighty predator came through the trees over to the shooter and tore the coat and a mask right off of the man. He was peeved to find that it was _not_ Nnoitora. This man was blonde and looked very different; Grimmjow didn’t recognize him.

The wind above whistled to the dead.

“Oh my god don’t kill me…” the fearful individual pleaded.

Hanging onto the rifle and his bow Grimmjow’s expression firmed up, he grabbed this blonde man by the neck and drug him through the snow with a brutish force. Nnoitora was out here somewhere…but fuck that guy right now, Nel was freezing to death. Grimmjow dropped the blonde by the woman’s tree and used the guy’s coat to cover the baker woman up, bound her wounds tight then turned back to the blonde and beat the ever-loving shit out of him until his dusky white gloves’ knuckles were red in a brutal interrogation over where the keys to unlocking the chains around the tree where.

Finally the blonde, with a partially destroyed face, coughed that Nnoitora had the keys.

Grimmjow stopped the merciless beating.

That had been hard to watch, the grateful baker woman found. “But…where’s Nnoitora?”

Grimmjow hissed out a stream of frustrated breath and turned around to move back to Nel as he was starting to untie some of his furs to help warm her up. Maybe they could wriggle her out of the chains. “I don't-”

There was a thunderous clap from behind.

“Hurk!” Grimmjow made a choking sound as he went down on his knees.

Read ALL my fanfictions on ArchiveofOurOwn.org. Art via: DeviantArt.com/FicticiousDelicious or FicticiousDelicious.Tumblr.com

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lokaveiði - Final Hunt


	8. Chapter Eighth - Kattakyns Þrek

_Panter af Norðanvindinum_

Chapter Eighth – “Kattakyns Þrek”

Like a force had shaken the sky and sent through it a crackling charge, the clouds turned up and came over, overcast, across the sun and the frozen north grew colder. Strange ravens started to gather and the animals of the woods crouched lower in the snow to hide.

With a bolt of lasting pain resonating through his torso Grimmjow’s reddened leather gloves scratched at the bark of the pine tree as sinking to his knees in uneven snow almost made him fall over for lack of balance; he’d been shot a second time now but in the thoracic part of his back. The pain of the bullet in his calf paled in comparison. Surprised and winded he choked out breaths in response to this.

Nel looked shocked and afraid.

A black-clad figure, lean build and no mask, in very warm wintery clothes was tromping out of the evergreens on the same side of the frozen gully looking pretty jovial about what he’d just done. His rifle swung in one hand. “Hey Grimmy! You old fucker you…” he mentioned when he got up close with a false friendliness, stepping over his bloodied comrade to look down on the man in white and bloodied fur. “…you forgetting how to hunt in your old age?”

Grimmjow glared back at Nnoitora in a confrontational manner, “You call _this_ a hunt?” One side of his back close to his spine continued to burn with pain.

Tapping his recently fired rifle against a leg Nnoitora didn’t seem to care. “The end of one actually.” Raising a booted foot the lean man stepped down on the white furs over where blood was staining the other man’s back and pushed down hard.

Grimmjow’s body bent toward the tree uncomfortably and surges of pain that made it hard to breathe shot through him as he clawed the tree, trying to get enough of a grip or traction to get up or slide out from under the foot. He would have yelled but the pain was so severe that he had no breath for it. The bark of the tree crackled under his gloves and his legs slipped around on compressed snow.

Nnoitora let off and stomped on the other man’s obvious bloody calf next, red malice in his eyes.

This time Grimmjow yelled in pain. Now both wounds hurt pretty bad.

Nel wriggled, careful not to dislodge the coat keeping her warmer. “No, stop! _Stop it!_ ”

Ravens in the trees screamed obnoxiously. Animals of the woods started to flee, rustling the trees and dislodging snow.

The blonde man that Grimmjow had interrogated briefly was just barely starting to sit up, face dripping blood onto the snow and not quite sure if he could talk right. “Uuugh…” His head was whirling. That guy…the one Nnoitora was beating on right now, was _really_ strong…

Winter winds swept down through the gully and close to the tree lines on both sides. It was getting colder as the clouds came in and afternoon waned. The spruce and pine trees groaned and snow fell from some of them. Few more clouds were gathering in the sky, and it would probably snow tonight.

Caring less about the weather right now, all of Nnoitora’s attention was fixed on his bane, as if nothing else mattered. As he removed his boot from the fur-clad man’s leg he noticed the compound bow and another rifle laying nearby. Nnoitora slung his own rifle around his shoulder by a strap, kicked his blonde helper’s rifle toward him, and leaned to pick up Grimmjow’s compound bow. “You know…”

Grimmjow managed to turn over and sit next to the pine tree in agony, then used it to gradually stand up and lean on as Nnoitora gathered arrows which he yanked out of his cohort’s limbs – three.

The blonde man was in agony too, more agony over this but he would survive; he was wrapping up his wounds tightly with cloth but it was freezing cold out here without his coat that he had yet to snatch back from their bait.

“I’m so fuckin’ tired of seein’ you.” Nnoitora plucked at the strings on the powerful bow.

Staring ahead with dead eyes over Nnoitora’s shoulder, Grimmjow huffed small breaths as he looked miserable and leaned on the tree. His jaw and beard trembled with a dying composure. He watched Nnoitora incredulously, who would torture an innocent person like Nel just to hunt a rival; it was beyond selfish, this hunt was no good. “Heiðursleysi.”

Ignoring words of the old ways Nnoitora went on to spit his personal complaints, “Actually, I’m tired of everything about you! The way you silently hand over your game so you can fuck Tier. The way you dis my work at the mercantile to make Renji think you’re great. The way you walk around town like you fuckin’ belong even when no one can stand you. You’re a relic, and you’re _in my way_.”

Nel piped up, “None of that is true!” Though who else was going to stand up for the truth?

Nnoitora glared at Nel.

Grimmjow’s eyes vaguely looked at the blonde who was just barely sitting up before drawing Nnoitora’s attention back to himself, “You limp-dick, look at me when you’re talking.” Only one of these guys was going to be a real problem, and if they left Nel alone all the better.

Nnoitora looked directly at the bearded man in furs with a killing stare. “You really want to make this worse for yourself, don’t you?”

Grimmjow’s eyes offered an equally hostile emotion for once. “ _Heiðursleysi_ ,” he repeated.

Nnoitora still didn’t look like he cared, but probably because he couldn’t understand that word. “Shut up, and just fucking die already,” Nnoitora shot Grimmjow in the shoulder with an arrow.

The arrow stuck in painfully deep and the man in stained white furs leaned back on the pine tree more heavily and hunched slightly. Shot with his own weapon, now that was a little shameful. Grimmjow gritted his teeth and refrained from yelling. He would try not to give his enemy the pleasure of his anguish. At this point whatever happened, _happened_.

Nnoitora wasn’t a poor shot, just a poor sport, but he was shooting pretty close. He clicked his tongue and nocked another arrow. “Hmm…killer bow…” He waited until his rival was recovering from the first, then shot Grimmjow in the other shoulder next.

Grimmjow’s head tilted upward with his teeth grinding and a seething expression up at the higher branches of the tree but completely defiant as his blue eyes came down and he glared straight at the other hunter. “No pyre for the man you’re about to kill, Nnoitora?”

“I’ll burn your reclusive shack to the ground, how about that?”

Grimmjow’s expression turned into an unsatisfying stoicism on purpose; he spat on Nnoitora’s foot. Someone at the cabin was waiting to shoot him if Nnoitora tried that. In a way…that was the first decent trap Grimmjow thought he might’ve ever been a part of. He didn’t worry too much about feisty Ichigo, for reasons. It took everything Grimmjow had not to grin wildly. “Síðasti veiðin minn…er síðasti andardrátturin þinn, _heiðursleysi_ ,” the wounded panther hissed.

Nnoitora started to pull back the bowstring and arrow and took a fatal aim; he shot an arrow into the center of Grimmjow’s chest. He watched with the expectation of satisfaction as his rival slumped back pretty hard against the pine tree. The arrow went through the bottle of water that the other man had in his coat with a sick crack and the fluid started to soak and drip down the furs not just clear but bloody.

The ravens watched, their eyes all marbles and heads canting with slight croaks.

Expression falling to just a tired stare, in a minute it looked like Grimmjow’s eyes gained a dullness and he stayed on his feet for a time but he didn’t move against the tree. To die on his feet was at least something.

Nel screamed and struggled and cried, “Grimmy! No! _NO!_ Nnoitora, how could you?! He’s never hurt you! He’s never hurt anybody!” She almost lost the coat off her torso and managed to get her bare feet out of the chains all scraped up and started to struggle even harder. “Grimmy, wake up!” The baker woman’s green skirt flailed wildly as she did which hurt considering the tightness of the chains.

Life could be cold but death was even colder for a predator trying to prove itself to be discerning and fair. The last panther these woods would ever know died under its trees, or perhaps had died long ago.

“Tess…let’s go. I’m tired of this already.” Nnoitora wasn’t kidding about burning Grimmjow’s cabin to the ground; he wanted to hurry up and start enjoying life without competition.

The blonde, Tesla didn’t exactly have the gall to interject, as an accomplice and because he tried not to have an opinion.

A dead man’s hand inside his furry coat had gone limp, letting a finger finally fall off the trigger of a radio receiver. Maybe the dead didn’t talk but their executioners and the witnesses sure had a knack for it.

Having heard nearly all of that Renji’s coffee mug shattered in front of the dining table as he stared ahead at a wall.

Being at Renji’s home in back of the mercantile as often as possible, especially for lunch like now, Hisagi looked absolutely petrified too but he snapped into reality in a few seconds sooner and moved to hold up Renji’s shocked and shaken form. “I’m sure it’s better than it sounds…”

Wracked with the guilt of the request he’d given Grimmjow earlier, some of Renji’s dreads slid around his shoulders as he hadn’t tied them up today and the man dared to admit, “No it’s not! I got him _killed!_ ” Renji blinked a few times to get the glazing of fluid over them to go away; his mouth hung open partially and moved a little as he tried to find other words but none would form. Renji had genuinely thought that nothing could have ever killed that tough man of the woods. “I got him killed…” he shuddered to repeat.

The radio in the home kitchen had just stopped hissing voices and to anyone else who was listening to that common frequency that was supposed to be used for emergencies, they’d probably heard too. One way or another, Nnoitora was going to seriously pay for his manner, but there was no way to resurrect the blue-haired hunter from the dead…

**HANN VAR BLÁR** **SEM HEL.**

The wise men and women know that the rogue panther leaves only tracks and blood in the snow. Ravens follow. To those he takes care of he brings sustenance and protection, and is patient and long-lived. Though he is not always seen, he is _always_ there among the trees.

The spruce and pines swayed and shed some of their snow therein the darkening, cold woods.

Before Nnoitora and his accomplice Tesla could leave they had to get Nel whose upper body was likely starting to feel like ice. Nnoitora aimed to approach Nel, just as soon as he’d had his fill of looking at his rival’s corpse, but staggered back when Grimmjow’s corpse _moved_.

Tesla backed up immediately too, just a step behind the other. “What…”

Nnoitora growled for silence.

Grimmjow shifted off of the tree and exhaled a pained sound before ripping one arrow after the other out of himself and sliding them back into his quiver, eyes’ stare still dull. He moved himself off of the tree and lunged at Nnoitora who couldn’t handle his weight and physical strength. This man was strong; he was _very_ strong… _unnaturally strong_. It was unexpected. They toppled over, knocking Tesla down who frantically scrambled away from the struggling men and over toward the trees.

“What the fuck?! How is he still doing this?!” Tesla shakily started loading his rifle and watched the two tumbling down the snowy side of the gully into the bottom curve and through the snow. His injuries slowed his capabilities and he had to hold his rifle with hands reversed. This was supposed to be easier!

After having lost the compound bow in the tumble, Nnoitora was a little too busy for response, grunting and struggling…

Landing on top of the pile against the cold snow, Grimmjow hissed and groaned in the other man’s face even though his eyes looked dead. He knocked his forehead extremely hard against Nnoitora’s and tried to smash the lean man’s head in and rip him apart with just his hands. He succeeded in tearing some of Nnoitora’s clothing with reddened leather gloves. It was harder to see in the afternoon’s overcast but Grimmjow’s skin was starting to lose color or become a blueish grey.

Nnoitora resorted to fending off the assault by hitting and kicking Grimmjow and eventually rolled them over but not before Tesla had a clear shot of the man on top of him.

There had been gunfire as Tesla shakily shot Grimmjow in the back again but lower, the lumbar section. A knife fell out of the fur-clad man’s coat as Grimmjow looked to be in discomfort.

Nnoitora immediately went for the several-inch-long knife and with desperation, because the other man set into a crazy second wind after being shot, Nnoitora stabbed Grimmjow inward of the neck, kicked the man in stained furs off of him and hopped backward. “Fuck!”

Tesla was holding his breath with shaking hands on his rifle.

Grimmjow was thrashing on the ground pretty erratically and scratching at the snow. The knife was still lodged in him.

Able to think better, Nnoitora lifted his own rifle, that he had slung over an arm, and tried to fire it at this freak of nature but the round jammed in the chamber. “Shit…” Nnoitora shook the gun around and banged on the chamber to undo the jam while yelling at Tesla, “Shoot him damnit!”

Roused from a fearful stupor, Tesla fired his rifle and put a bullet into Grimmjow’s chest through the pec and one very stained white fur coat.

The voice of the dead cried out, harmonizing with the wind. The ravens screamed again.

Grimmjow roared and pivoted in the snow, starting to stand up once more. Though his form heaved and huffed his apparent breath was not warm enough to plume from dried lips surrounded by a snowy beard. He turned his deadened eyes toward the men.

“What the fuck?!” Nnoitora was pretty pissed off. He was having no luck unjamming his rifle and realizing that Grimmjow was up again he desperately snatched up a bloody arrow and the compound bow from the snow.

Tesla was just plain freaked out.

Nnoitora was silent, mostly watching Grimmjow.

Pulling the knife out of his neck with a broad spurt of blood Grimmjow fully turned around with a stagger and a huff but his breath still didn’t plume. In a coordinated manner he tossed down the knife as he looked at Nnoitora and Tesla very differently than he had before, eyes becoming more vibrant. Bones started to crack and shift, and while some pieces of his clothes fell off others just stretched and tore. His flesh turned darkish purple, then grey with a blue tinge. His face began to warp into a hairless feline shape with long wicked ears and a muzzle full of jagged fangs and drooling. His hands and feet tore through gloves and boots with claws and broadening paws and his posture fell to that of a quadruped as mighty forelegs dropped paws into snowy ground. A fleshy tail lashed about behind him. He was as large as a man but perverted into a vile predator’s shape and looked nothing like the man he’d been before, his eyes steely and he stank mightily like death.

Tesla’s hands were shaking too much to do anything.

Nnoitora was almost the same but he snapped out of fear sooner and reacted by nocking an arrow in the compound bow and firing it at the unnatural thing’s head.

The arrow shattered. It shattered, like it was made of brittle wood or ice, _before_ it had even touched the creature…which shook off the shards and took a bold step forward, eyeing the men ahead and growled and hissed.

There was another arrow stuck in the snow then…but it was hardly noticed and the ground sucked it down in.

Behind all of this happening, there had appeared a person-like figure in leather that rested on folded legs on top of a big, black _bear_ across the frozen gully watching the events. They, with a compound bow that looked like it had green and strange plants growing all over it, had shot down the vile hunter’s arrow. Their bright yellow eyes peered out of the shade of their soft leathery hood, a piercing and bright quality that was as sharp as it was predatory. Perhaps another predator of the woods, and perhaps that was how they had tamed this well-behaved bear.

Realizing that there was someone else Tesla screamed across the gully, “ _Help us!_ This person is _mad!_ ”

The hooded figure shook their head. No. They were not here to help men that kidnapped and hunted their own kind…and that thing was not much of a person anymore. “He is blue as Hel…and _vicious_ , as you’ll see,” the figure spoke quietly, as if mumbling to themselves or their mount, the black bear.

“Help us!” Tesla insisted.

Only glancing at the figure across the way, Nnoitora took a wary step back as he watched the horrid creature they faced stomping on the snow with tendrils of drool dripping from fangs and its eyes deciding how to come at them. It did not seem to care that there was someone else. Out of arrows for the compound bow Nnoitora threw it down and went back to shaking his rifle around to unjam it. “Come on you fucking thing-” Fruitlessly, Nnoitora turned to grab Tesla’s away from him since his cohort wasn’t doing much of anything to assist. For a moment the men bickered over the rifle and then in a flash of an attack Nnoitora and the rifle were dragged away back into the low part of the gully.

As Nnoitora screamed for help Tesla tried to run away. For which he found an arrow through the back of his head and stuck out between his eyes. The world went black as he fell face-first into snow with a crunch and did not move.

Nel was too shocked to turn her head away or too scared to say anything.

Nnoitora was being torn limb from limb and probably eaten…

Grimmjow’s sullied mind was nothing but an endless stream of kill commands and the desire to feed and destroy. Blood and drool dripped from the hairless feline shape that had become his face. His fanged jaws snapped and broke bones. It was very disgusting and when this creature of death had its fill there was nothing but a pile of ambiguous meat scraps, some bones, blood, hair and clothes across the snow. Grimmjow wobbled before he might stalk off but noticed the baker woman on the tree and started stalking toward her with nothing about his disposition changed and a new hunger for more killing and feeding invoked. A sharp whistle cut through the air that made him stop. With large hairless and wicked ears turning predatory eyes beheld something that looked vastly more threatening approaching from behind and forgot about the woman as with lips peeled back the creature hissed and displayed his teeth. He would confront the figure riding the bear which was trotting down into the gully. Four legs carried the clothing-tattered creature there. It left huge pawprints in the snow. Grimmjow was _half_ the size of that black bear but twice the size of the person on it and outnumbered but the predator did not care, for a bigger opponent did not intimidate such an aggressive creature. Jowls wrinkling he still hissed and whipped a hairless, grey-blue tail back and forth as damaged clothing and furs hung off of his fetid form.

The ravens were watching again; should one come down too soon the lot probably understood that early bird might be eaten.

The figure upon the bear seemed to be a man by a bare, flat chest that presented when he moved and slipped down off of the black bear, his mount, carrying the verdant bow with him as cloaking leathers fluttered around and his bare feet with wooden and bone beads on bands at his ankles pressed through the foot or two of snow. He wore an outfit of leather underneath the cloak that still left plenty of his skin exposed. This one seemed unphased by the cold temperatures. As the creature charged him the figure was calm, “No, I don’t think so.” The figure swept his free hand out one way and a gust of hard wind blew down and pushed the cat creature away with a tumble.

The creature crashed through feet of snow and then sprang back up, charging again immediately from the side and oozing blood from the wounds it had already sustained.

The figure barely moved but brought the force of some aura down upon it and the cat flattened with a hiss into the snow before reaching him and before the force let up. The figure’s piercing yellow eyes watched it and of course as soon as it recovered footing the creature came again. This time the figure in leathers deftly moved out of the way and pulled the dark grey-blue cat creature’s forelegs out from under him with the bow and toppled the fetid creature into the snow and it slid a short distance away. It was a long process again and again to parry or dodge the cat creature’s attacks, but the figure never seemed to go for the killing blow. The aim was just to tire it out completely; if it didn’t kill itself with exertions, but he did damage the fetid creature in several spots and continued until it staggered and collapsed into the snow. The figure walked up close to the creature and looked it over as wind moved the stained and torn clothing over its hairless, fetid flesh. Its eyes were still open; he had not killed it though it smelled of death and whined with a low sound of misery.

Like this Grimmjow was miserable…and as far as he’d known he was never going to be a man again, the old ways had warned him. The cold wind of the north blew his breath away.

The figure had waited long enough. Once the disgusting and discolored creature was calm the figure did reach down its throat into its stomach to retrieve keys for the locks on the chains around the tree. The cat creature coughed as it stayed laying in the snow but didn’t try to bite his arm off.

The well-behaved bear moved over and sat in the snow nearby the cat creature, perhaps to make sure that it behaved too.

The figure in leathers walked through the snow, shaking off the gross drool and blood on his arm with clinking keys, toward the woman at the tree. “Anytime you can stop pretending…” The tongue he spoke in from then on was a dead one, or thought dead by most.

Ravens started to descend and pick at the meat scraps and torn bits of man through the snow.

The baker woman didn’t look traumatized by anything that had just happened, so strikingly different than her demeanor before the figure’s arrival. In a sort of melding way she slithered back into the pine tree and jumped out of it, tossing the ties that had bound her hands and feet away as she leapt down and landed barefoot in the snow. The chains dropped to the bottom of the tree. Her face changed a little and her green hair lengthened by feet and sprouted vines. This was not the town’s baker woman.

“You could have done that sooner…” The figure in leathers looked at his gross arm and the nasty pair of keys. Ugh… Flicking the nasty keys aside with a sound of disapproval the man sighed at the cat creature.

“I didn’t tell you that you _had_ to get the key,” she explained, speaking the same dead tongue. An elegant verdant bodice of leaves and vines grew out of the top of her green skirt and covered her chest, up the neck and arms. A pair of pea-pod like shoes with vines grew around her feet and the unusual woman trotted down the side of the frozen gully to meet the leather-clad figure. She held out her hands expectantly.

He placed the leafy and plant sprouting compound bow in them, a vine and leafy release bracelet and the arrows too.

The verdant woman was pleased to have her bow back after many years and started to wander off with it.

“ _AHEM_ ,” the leather-clad figure crossed his arms and tapped a bare foot in the snow, still apparently unphased by the cold environment.

The ravens began to scatter.

“Oh right…your sword…” She stopped in her pea-pod shoes and turned with a flourish. She raised a hand and the earth spat out a black sword from the snow that landed at the leather-clad figure’s bare feet, who reached to pick it up immediately. The verdant woman walked further away before descending into the ground like there were stairs going down. She was done with this and taking her leave now before anyone else arrived to see her associated with this.

The leather-clad figure stared hard at her with his yellowed eyes until she was gone. He could only assume that the woman she was impersonating was safe somewhere. The leather-clad figure stared at the still body of the cat creature, were it not such a feat to let the thief of her bow yet exist…he would have questioned where her gratitude was. Then he turned in a flourish of leather and holding his black sword greeted strange, fair and raven-feathered women walking toward them through the frozen gully. Their otherworldly appearance had been sudden but not unexpected.

The black bear stood up and sat over top of the cat creature which had no room for complaint.

So they had realized there was work…but this figure in leathers could try to cut them down or try to turn them away…or maybe redirect them.

They, three women, stopped a short distance from the leather-clad figure who seemed to preside over something of their interest. The ravens had returned, following them.

Either side’s eyes were all quite fierce and at equal match for intimidation.

“We come for the dead,” they all said.

The figure took his stance. “There are just remains and one dead man here, there are no more to claim.”

“There are not three for the three of us?”

“There are not three. Two.”

Read ALL my fanfictions on ArchiveofOurOwn.org. Art via: DeviantArt.com/FicticiousDelicious or FicticiousDelicious.Tumblr.com

[This is what happened when I tried using Google Translate to assist with the creation of this title. (it is pretty literal and some terms it just kills - do note: Google Translate was not my only source, this was just a hilarious hiccup I found along the way)](https://ficticiousdelicious.tumblr.com/post/612742944262356992/working-a-title-and-seeing-what-google-translate)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kattakyns Þrek - Cat Creature's Endurance ('kattakyn' is an undead creature)  
> Heiðursleysi - Honorless (like: dissolved [of] honor)  
> "Síðasti veiðin minn…er síðasti andardrátturin þinn, heiðursleysi." - "My last hunt…is your last breath, honorless."  
> HANN VAR BLÁR SEM HEL. - HE WAS BLUE AS HEL. (translated 'blár' as blue and not black mostly to suit Grimmjow)


	9. Chapter Ninth - Drengr á Eldinum

_Panter af Norðanvindinum_

Chapter Ninth – “Drengr á Eldinum”

Though three had come for a count of three, three women left with only one and a handful of meat to take and they flew away with the rustle of raven feathers and then the ravens of the trees picked at the remaining bits of meat. Realms above perhaps none the wiser.

In town Espada’s baker woman turned up the same day at someone else’s door in a panic over her home being thrashed and door broken down. Nel did not know why they were like that, or did not remember… It was fated for this to happen and someone of old had taken her memories and her place during the worst danger. To solve Nel’s panic it came to a guilt-ridden Renji and a few others helping with supplies to mend her residence as the day’s weather rapidly changed into treacherous wind and snow. Deadly gales. Winter’s visitation was rough. Through late afternoon a huge blizzard had formed with great gales of snow, trapping all of Espada inside their homes and adding cold matter to the land. The storm was strongest in the north where it lingered stubbornly over the woods…and the heroic and terrible secrets therein.

While the storm raged a great bear laden with two bodies, chains and many closed traps and scraggly snares came out of the woods. Its mighty stride was not stopped by the blizzard. Through the harsh winds and pummeling snow and big drifts the bear traveled all the way to a property just an acre large and stepped over the gate, plowing and trampling snow away with its great paws until it stopped by a log cabin’s door, windows aglow from a fire within, to let the bodies slide off. To whom this bear was loyal braced another man looking haggard and tortured with wounds down and into the cabin, careful shuffling and struggling with the awkward weight of the body leaning on him, the figure in leathers was fine with this…this man had been very kind to him once and help was well deserved. He’d covered his host with his leather cloak.

Grimmjow had not the mind to really realize what was going on around him. He’d died…and he was still moving around…walking…

Before the log cabin’s door the enormous black bear shrank to a cub size and went in after its master and their host, the figure was sure to hold the door, with clacking claws and nostrils flaring at the scents of the cabin. The pile of traps and snares was left outside.

A creaking of wood and hinges and the door was shut tight with a clack. The cabin creaked its own as the weather outside battered the landscape. Herein it was already warmed as if expectant of the inhabitants to return soon, and orderly, tidy as though someone had cared about the state it was in for when its owner should return. Leaving a black sword and a compound bow at the door, over floorboards the figure carried his staggering host on, discolored limbs all swaying with dirty bits of leather, white furs and a tail dragging the ground. They went toward a place where the leather-clad figure could undress this bearded man and try to pluck out the bullets and seal wounds that would have been fatal were this fellow still alive.

Looking exactly the shape of a man again, though his skin was discolored, Grimmjow wasn’t alive but he could still feel and wrenching and pulling on bullets and shrapnel lodged in him was not pleasant. He passed out of an already confused consciousness. The only reason he could feel anything was because his state had returned to that of a man and something about this figure… The figure had taken the time to restore him to a man’s shape before they left the woods with _all_ of the foul traps that had been laid by the man that Grimmjow had devoured. He’d wretched that meal up already. The bearded man did not yet know gratitude for restoring the woods but surely there was some way to tell his sullied mind…

The figure in soft leathers used coals to sear cleared punctures and other wounds shut because a corpse could not heal its own and would just keep losing blood and becoming less and less human. He stroked the undead man’s blue hair and beard and looked upon the haggard fellow bittersweetly. He placed a bag stuffed with wool under Grimmjow’s head to help him be comfortable.

The black bear cub was lumbering toward the fireplace and sat down close on the hearth as if to watch.

Grimmjow’s mouth in unconsciousness gaped slightly but he did not breathe. He was still quite bloody and fetid to smell, unusually for the weather’s aid in preservation. Kind of foul and no amount of pine nor cedar in the cabin could overcome that but the freezing temperatures outside had preserved him longer, as it did all things. A host’s dark blood was upon his own hearth… By the fireplace was sprawled out bloody and damaged clothing like white leathers and furs as though an animal had died and shed its skin here. Strange animal that.

The light of the fireplace showed the figure’s face easily and it was this man’s guest, _Ichigo_ who was not at all helpless as he’d seemed. The wounds down his leg had sealed into scars and showed through his dually slit and skirt-like leather clothing to cover his lower half. His chest was bare and fair-skinned. The bag he’d had to cut off Grimmjow’s hip, tatters of pants and a tunic from the other man, cloth thermals and the furry coat all joined the pile of destroyed clothing in an extremely sorry state. The last sad leathers of poached northern cats…and the last one like them laying here. Ichigo covered Grimmjow up though he really did desire to shamelessly gaze on the man he’d been craving. The fetid smell was enough to make Ichigo feel uncomfortable but he could do something to help. After feeding his bear the remainder of jerky from the ruined bag he put back on his cloak and ran a warm bath for his host, scraping in the salve that had done so well for him and stirred it in the trough with water until it dissolved. Small leaves floated in the liquid. Then he dipped a hand into the water to imbue it with a spell. Having more trouble moving Grimmjow without the undead man walking himself Ichigo struggled to get him into the tub but eventually he was there and now Ichigo had all the excuse in the world to gaze on this man as he washed him with the warm herbal waters. He sang softly, a song that was meant as a boon. Dripping and splashing sounds of water streaming out of a wrung cloth fell into the trough partially filled and smelling of spring. Soft and tawny material sprawled out as Ichigo sat by the tub in his beautiful buckskin clothes with a tender eye and sang with a soft tone. He enjoyed singing. Pine. Cedar. Leather. Plants. Blood and _death_ …

Grimmjow started to open his eyes, very slowly at first. He did not feel well. Horrifically the yellow eyes of his nightmares stared down upon him but his mind was clearing up a bit.

Ichigo leaned over the tub and paused in washing the other man and kissed him.

Now Grimmjow woke up a lot. After a few seconds seduced by the sweet kiss he pushed off the other man and leaned as far back into the trough as it would allow. Alarmed eyes watched the man in tawny leathers. It wasn’t the kiss this time it was the _eyes_. He hated those cursed eyes; they haunted his dreams…

Ichigo realized the fear and surprise in the other man and sat back calmly resigned.

Grimmjow was so used to living in full control of himself that the coherence and such which he had back presently was being overlooked. Afterall, he’d never been dead before. This was _new_. Though he did not realize it yet, the waters he was in were suppressing the undeath in him.

A slightly new sort of man this Ichigo was but hardly seemed that way as his face and body were not changed much save for scars, short stubble and yellowed eyes…but the yellow flickered out of his eyes kindly; he smiled and straightened his tawny leathers shyly. He didn’t want to scare Grimmjow and actions would go miles before words.

Grimmjow didn’t respond, just stared.

This small god in soft leather clothes knew that his kind host had been right. He could not hold Grimmjow, even now. No god would hold this man dead or alive if he did not allow it. Ichigo teared up just a little. He cried because he knew he’d cursed this man…for killing those cats; oh how situations changed.

As the undeath was temporarily reversed by the magical imbuement in the herbal water Grimmjow’s stare softened and he started to wash himself with the water in the trough, realizing what it was doing for him. His skin was turning peach again but if a part of him was out of it for too long he felt a terrible chill.

Ichigo was left to settle his own tears and few they were they were not misleading. He held up the pendant Grimmjow had put on him, specifically a wooden stick upon it with carvings. “You knew…” The carvings told of one dying…

Grimmjow’s blue eyes vaguely glanced it and then returned to washing himself and sank into the trough as much as possible to soak. He did not brag courage, he demonstrated it and faced fate. Stalwart. Courageous. Remorseful maybe even. Nothing showed but stoicism though, so that no one could pity or empathize with him.

“You should be in the great hall drinking, eating and fighting in cycles but I-!” The leather-clad figure squeezed his hands on his lap. “Your undeath was my curse. I took your right. If you tell me you do not want _anything_ to do with me ever again I would be even more sorry…” Having seen new sides of the man he once hated had very strongly changed Ichigo’s mind.

“Being sorry that you cursed me makes you a fool,” Grimmjow replied stubbornly. What he’d done was still wrong and he’d figured he was cursed. People didn’t just have blue hair all of the sudden one morning – this was years ago.

The leather-clad man’s mouth gaped a little, “Your punishment is _over_ ,” he insisted. “It has been over for so long, can’t you feel that?”

Grimmjow was silent and unmoved because he could not. The leaf-flecked, herbal waters rippled around his shoulders, end of his beard, neck and knees.

Ichigo didn’t see Grimmjow’s expression moved by his words at all and so he tried to touch the bearded man’s bare shoulder but the man moved it away. “It is _over_. Do you not see the honor you’ve restored?!”

Again Grimmjow was silent because he did not feel that way.

“I will feel sorry whenever I want to! You are dead but we will dry you out. I will burn you. You will be ok and able to have your right again. You _will_ be honored for what you’ve atoned with!” Ichigo’s voice was desperate but the calm way that Grimmjow was listening made him even more unsettled for some reason. It was his turn to atone once things had gone too far.

“I already am.” Grimmjow just closed his eyes and stayed in the water. There was no fate too harsh that he would reject, but to have someone so distraught over his future…that was something of an honor. He wouldn’t be greedy for more, though his predatory core was still with him and it rumbled with a desire he would not allow to express.

The figure in leathers started to cry, softly and into his hands; he could not stop. Had he known that this human had the capacity to become someone better he would not have doomed him to undeath in any case of death. This host of his was even powerful enough of mind to assume other forms in that state. This man was mighty and repentant, and he’d _doomed_ him! Ichigo took the tears in his hands and plunged them into the water of the trough which rapidly started to bubble.

Grimmjow jerked and sat up as the sensation of being drug down weighed in on him and the bubbling herbal waters glowed faintly. He grabbed the sides of the tub and with shaking arms held himself up. “What are you- STOP!”

Ichigo gritted his teeth ignoring the request because he was stubborn.

Barely able Grimmjow struggled more but his strength was very limited. The man tipped over the trough and spilled out with it and the magical, herbal water. Such grew green moss immediately upon the wooden floor and small plants out of anything else even vaguely organic that it touched, like one leg of the couch and its fabric. Weakly Grimmjow just lay on the sprouted bed of moss; he could feel the life draining out of him again now. The reason that the magic and salve had intermingled so well was because some of the ingredients for the salve had been plucked from that verdant bow before it had stopped blooming…strange flowers…

Ichigo jumped up in horror. “What have you done?!”

“I told you to stop,” the weary man responded before he was too weak to do so.

“You’ll be _rotten! Fetid!_ ”

“I deserve it.” Perhaps self-loathing.

The figure in leathers cried out a long and painful sound as he realized that this was going to end horribly. The cabin, under the blizzard, creaked more. He commanded the black bear to return to the woods and so it did as he helped it leave safely out into the wind and snow. Then Ichigo shut and bolted the cabin door, watching as his host weakly started to sit up on the moss but in the next moment Ichigo went toward the fireplace instead of to the other man’s side. Ichigo took out a chunk of the burning wood’s coals and raised it in a fist; it did not harm him. He was going to burn them _both_ , not a clear idea what a pyre would do to him specifically, but if a god initiated this then surely they would have some power over the fate of the person that they wanted to honor with the pyre.

With a second-wind Grimmjow had clamored up, naked but hardly shy now that he noticed what his guest was doing. He grabbed Ichigo’s arm and hands with pain from the coals searing his palms. “Stop!” Even though his hand was burning he squeezed the coals so that the other man couldn’t drop them.

Ichigo’s breath quivered as he looked straight into the eyes of a man he admitted that he wanted to keep forever… “…but…” The coals crumbled in their hands and showered onto the floor around them, some rolling under the couch and started fire. Others went out immediately but Ichigo grabbed Grimmjow’s form to support him and keep him here. He blinked and tears streaked down his face as the fire started to spread, crackling dangerously. The figure spoke in words of old softly and completely and the fire started to spread faster.

Grimmjow looked around with eyes wide and he would not be able to stand if it wasn’t for Ichigo who held onto him. It was surreal to watch his home burning to the ground…the place he’d had shelter for so long. For some reason it almost made _him_ want to tear up, or was it just the blasted heat? Grimmjow could certainly feel the blaze upon his face and bare body now and it was almost hard to look at such a huge fire rising around them.

Ichigo cupped and turned the other man’s bearded face and said a few more words of old before kissing his forehead. “This is your pyre…like it or not…I will _not_ let you be doomed to rot and shamble…” Ichigo hissed a breath and stared into angry eyes as there was no stoicism left. “If you want to fight me over this I understand…”

Grimmjow grit his teeth at first, holding onto the leathers on this man for all the support he could get, but the truth was that Ichigo was waiting to burn too…

“…see me in your next life.” Ichigo leaned in again with whispered words of old and the faintest glimmer of yellow in his eyes like glassy gold. Even though the other man was clearly irritated with him Ichigo pressed their lips together, gently, but this time was not shoved backward. Soft stubble caught the texture of a beard. It was a nice final feeling as he expected to die too. As the flames of the burning cabin closed in there was a mutual hold and Ichigo felt Grimmjow’s stance and grip strengthen. Fixtures collapsed. Appliances and metal melted. Gas bottles and containers exploded. Leather, fur and wool flared… The cabin was effectively burning down in the flashiest sense. Even though some things collapsed over them those fell near and not on top of the men as they cleaved to each other embracing amidst it.

Ichigo shut his eyes. He didn’t want to see the flames coming; he was afraid of this fire.

Eyes shut too, part of a want he’d swore never to indulge was filled. Painless, Grimmjow didn’t even notice that the fires burned off his hair; he could not feel pain so long as he was touching Ichigo, but he did not know that. The flames danced in a rage with all of the fuel they could ask for. Wood crackled. The blizzard outside could not stop the fire as the roof fell away. His skin would be the last to go, and Ichigo’s leather clothing seared away though not his hair but instinctively when they were both naked Grimmjow pulled the other man in even closer and squeezed the muscle of the figure’s back to himself and slid his hands down to a more intimate hold. He was angry but for some reason this made it better… He kissed the bare figure of tangerine hair, holding on of his own will.

With eyes shut Ichigo did realize some of what was going on as the fire only burned away his mortal garb; he was happy to have Grimmjow and climbed onto his host’s body wrapping legs around and encouraged more of the intimacy.

Grimmjow’s instinctive sense of what to do was coming along and he paid no attention to sounds of burning and the flames getting under his feet and burnt or burning debris falling around them because none of it harmed them. He squeezed harder Ichigo’s lean muscles and the other man clung tightly as the fire completely swallowed them. When Grimmjow was too weak to hold Ichigo up he laid the other man down and knelt close to him on fiery wood. None of this felt real but he somehow knew it was…

It was a sharp but satisfying penetration for Ichigo but his legs hooked behind Grimmjow and encouraged more of it.

Grimmjow put himself from deep to shallow over and over again in the other man with long breaths. Those predatory desires were very full now. With the last ounces of life that water had given him he did _this_. They both panted with the heat and started feel changed but sharing the same sensations and pleasure. By the time Grimmjow felt release the flames had started to sear away his skin but it was not horrid.

Ichigo would cling naked to the burning form of this man, Grimmjow was turning into flames but when he was brave enough to open his eyes Ichigo saw that the frost meeting the heat was doing something else to this man… With his heart beating fast Ichigo would keep the man inside of him until Grimmjow was _reformed_. How to turn an undead into the honorable dead…a totally new being…but with the same mind: a god accompanying them on their pyre. The small god could only hope it would completely work.

It felt pleasurable but Grimmjow somehow knew it _should_ mostly be pain. His mind went through strange sensations, like he’d been cast through a wall of ice, fallen into fire and sizzled until he was a part of both. There was a strange energy in his body. Through a gap of consciousness he ripped himself out of smoldering embers, waking up in a pile of burnt wood, charcoal partly, with Ichigo’s lovely naked form sprawled over glowing coals below him. Grimmjow’s looked at his hands holding on. He’d…done this?

The unusual fellow gave a long erotic sigh of relief and released himself with a wide spread of his hands and digging curling toes and fingers into the embers and charcoal. That had been much longer and better than he’d thought it would. Ichigo’s mouth stayed partly open and he looked so enamored; he’d honestly _never_ had that kind of pleasure before. So that’s why gods fraternized with humans…but Grimmjow wasn’t very human anymore…

The bed of embers and charcoal wasn’t flaming but it was the warmest, most satisfying bed Grimmjow felt he’d ever been upon; it would not harm him. Slowly he shifted his pelvis back and drew a relaxing member out of Ichigo’s body, who shuddered timidly. Then Grimmjow realized fully what they’d done. Somewhere in him the man still wanted to be angry but looking over probably the most beautiful scene he’d ever seen made that _very_ hard… His guest’s hair was not always _this long_ , was it? Grimmjow took a few breaths to calm down and realize that they weren’t in a blizzard at least, then looked down at himself, inspecting what seemed like his same old skin and scars. He felt _alive_.

As he lifted himself out of the embers and coals Ichigo had grand antlers grown from his head like a great stag and long locks of orange hair, his eyes went down from yellow back to hazel and slowly he sat up the rest of the way with a hum and reached for Grimmjow’s rough hands, cupping them and showing the man the sealed scars on his leg as though they were proof of who he was – just to be sure.

After a few breaths one naked man, not even hair left on him, was drawn to look away from the man in front of him and around at the vast and snowy world which was no longer covered in snow but exceptionally _verdant_ …the snow was melting and revealing green grass and wild fresh herbs and foods like berries and vegetables reaching up from the ground around the sizzling burnt pile of wooden material. It seemed even the shed had burnt down because it was gone…though it was rightly doubtful to Grimmjow’s mind that they were even in the same realm anymore. The earth had swallowed up everything else that could have been here and all that was green like gardens surrounded them. The scent of crisp cedar and pine was many times subdued with that of the verdant landscape and its many flowers and other such plants. He had clearly been transported somewhere new…

Under Ichigo’s fingertips Grimmjow’s beard started to regrow and the hair from his head too but instead of a _cursed_ blue it was blue like the sky, fair and light. Ichigo thought it suited his handsome host. “ _Well_ …what do you think?” Of this place perhaps. “Do you feel alright?”

Grimmjow had forgotten his anger when a strange wind came over him among this beautiful realm. It was hot like flames…he did not recognize it… Grimmjow pulled his hands out of Ichigo’s and looked fully around in a wary manner as they still sat on top of the pile of coals with the other man. Dew fell off of some of the trees and turned in shimmering drops before it hit the ground. Birds chirped. Animals scurried into bushes. The blue sky had large clouds. The predator felt so lost out of his snowy element, but it was beautiful here that he felt fine otherwise.

Sighing Ichigo reached and tapped one of the wary man’s hands lightly. “It’s been a while huh? Since you’ve seen a green season. The weather here is warm and everything is fertile and-”

Grimmjow’s eyes got narrow and head turned back to look at the man he was with, whose tangerine locks draped over his shoulders and smile was warm and somehow shy. That massive rack on Ichigo’s head… Grimmjow felt his chest tighten a little, probably just a bit shy himself; they were both naked. The knowledge of the old ways came knocking on his mind presently. Even though this clearly looked like someone he could trust… “It is not a servant who accompanies a master to their next life?”

Ichigo blinked open his eyes wider. “Huh?”

Grimmjow reached for the other man’s hair and stroked it with a studious stroke and looking down at the long strands between his fingers he spoke. Who sleeps with another upon a bed of fiery coals?

“It is not always that way. You are free.” The man of hair like tangerines slipped the orange locks away, standing up and holding out his hands to the man still sitting. The warm winds blew the long strands of his hair around just a little. “Stand up, we will go to my hall, I will get you a meal and clothing, a weapon and I will _take you_ to the great hall of warriors _myself_.”

Grimmjow was wary of something like this but he got up anyway. As they walked he only looked back once. How different it was to walk, two naked men, through such nature but not terribly strange a feeling – more natural. He noticed Ichigo holding onto his hand tightly.

The figure looked focused. “I will tell the ones who gather fallen warriors for their armies that you were lost to them because of a curse. I _will_ convince them to allow you to prove that you belong.” Ichigo was tugging the other man’s arm to hurry him along for fear that there was not enough time. They came to follow a stone path eventually but met no one else on the way. Ichigo’s hair swept in the warm breeze. His antlered head bobbed with his gait.

It was like following a dream… Grimmjow thought he saw a flash of a form in the verdant land that was familiar but he didn’t know why. Perhaps Ichigo shared this realm with someone else; the old ways were not always so detailed as to explain everything about the realms. When they had walked for a long time they came up to a great house of old design and made of wood and stone. Grimmjow was ushered inside where he stepped past the threshold and stopped there as Ichigo left his arm back to him and went off quickly to gather the things he’d promised.

Gathering leather clothing that might fit the other man, difficult because of his larger size, Ichigo also clothed himself much like he’d looked before with buckskin, a bottom piece and a cloak, and as he came back to hand Grimmjow the other leathers the other man acted like he did not want them. Ichigo appeared greatly puzzled. “There isn’t time to be picky-”

“Have you ever known me to be picky?”

Ichigo’s lips stalled as he was about to say something and closed his mouth for a thoughtful second before he had an answer. “No.” He was confused though.

Grimmjow’s vibrant blue eyes looked far around the hall of the great house. A long table with places set for so many that weren’t here sat in the middle. A presiding chair was on the far end of the main room with a black sword laid across its arms. Leather and fur and plants decorated the walls. Grand lights with blazing flame and ornamental weapons and useful weapons alike were upon the walls too. A great fireplace with a carved stone hearth and mantle was ready to use on cold nights. This was a _god’s_ hall…it was hard to believe. His eyes switched back to the figure clad in soft, tawny leathers again and he put a hand on the leathers which had been brought to him so that the other man knew that he was not rejecting them.

Now the roles were reversed, the host of this hall blinked until his eyes turned down as his hands clutching the leathers were relieved by his guest taking them and slowly watched them go into Grimmjow’s hands. Ichigo stared in amazement then realized that he was seriously being rude right now letting this man dress by the threshold and ushered Grimmjow back toward a room where he could get dressed in comfort and privacy. Before Grimmjow got a word in Ichigo shut him in there and scampered away in a nervous fashion to sit upon his presiding chair and fidget with his sword and leather clothing’s sleeves like those would cure his anxiousness. He’d…not often had company and the man…oh what he’d done with him… Dropping his sword with a clank Ichigo covered his softly stubbled face with soft sleeves and went over thing again in his head. It was impulsive. Had he screwed up? Would he even be able to get Grimmjow a place in that honorable hall?

Predator had had what could be prey but in a _better_ way. Perhaps no one would pay sorely for that.

Behind a closed door Grimmjow put the leathers on and tightened their strings, with an appreciation for how beautiful the tanned leather was; some of it was even embossed. This stuff was an otherworldly quality. When he went out of the room that had seemed to be perhaps his host’s own sleeping room attached to the main room of the hall Grimmjow noticed Ichigo up on the chair and adjusted his sleeves while walking until he got to the rise of stone that the large chair was upon. He wore thick leather pants and a soft tunic with a belt and bracers.

Sitting there Ichigo was curled up onto the chair and looked up when he realized his guest was done. “We go- Uh…”

Grimmjow had bowed sincerely.

Ichigo jumped up and came down making Grimmjow straighten up.

“I wouldn’t want to leave your hall. I’m happy _here_.”

“Why?! There’s- …your honor… You’re meant for a warrior’s place.”

The bearded man was not greedy. “I do not need placement in a hall of other warriors or serving in an army to be either. I would also not simply be with you for passage, but I’m asking you not to make me your servant over it.”

Ichigo considered for a moment and drew back his arms tightly. What did he say to something like that?!

“Was I neither before you brought me here to repair the curse?”

Ichigo’s face was stuck in a twist of amazement; this man was not wrong he was already both – a warrior and honorable. But why was Grimmjow giving up his chance to… “You would give up recognition for yourself to be _here?_ ”

“Would it not honor you to have one who could sit in a warrior’s hall reside in yours?”

The figure tipped his antlered head and put his hands on leather covered hips, puffing up his bare chest. “Not just to share my bed at night I hope.”

Grimmjow snorted and narrowed his eyes a little. “Think you’re _something_ , huh? With such a big _rack_.”

An antlered Ichigo looked very embarrassed; that was a playful dis.

There came a knock at the hall’s door and the two men looked sharp and turned as one opened the door far from them. “Greetings~” A verdant bow and quiver of arrows was upon her back and in her hands she carried a sword with a bluish grip. There were vines in her long green hair with a verdant bodice and billowing green skirt that flowed. As Ichigo gestured for her to come in, like a friend, her feet in pea-pod shoes stepped toward them around the long table in the hall’s center and smiled at both of them with greenish lips. She offered the sword to Grimmjow who looked cautious. “This realm is beautiful but it is not without its dangers and dangerous visitors.”

Grimmjow shook his head stubbornly. “I could not take anything more from you.”

“This is not anything more or less than you had before. This sword is your might and your status,” the verdant visitor assured. “Though a weapon like this may be new to you, you should learn to use it in time.”

Ichigo shook Grimmjow’s arm gently and nodded at the sword. This was a huge honor to be forgiven by this verdant goddess and given a _gift_. “Pantera. Panther’s sword. It was made in memory when we thought the last one died,” Ichigo was almost whispering, “but _you’re_ the last one.”

Grimmjow held back his hand from a strong guilt.

The verdant goddess insisted with a gesture forward, “ _Take it_. You _are_ the last, panter af norðanvindinum. The sword can belong to no one else.”

With a shaking hand Grimmjow decided by the pressure two ways to at least grip the sword and found a sure firmness in the way his hand held around the blue hilt and an energy from it resonating with him. His eyes widened a little as he picked it up and held it; he’d never seen this weapon before but somehow it felt like his own. Somehow this sword both made his heart feel hollow and strong.

“This sword will allow you to take other forms. Now you can _hunt_ as you prefer.” The verdant goddess smiled and nodded. “Only what you need, as you know now.”

Grimmjow’s hand clenched around the hilt and nodded in a savvy manner.

“I will bring all the meat I have left so that you can hunt more. We will have a feast!” Ichigo looked toward the goddess, “You’ll maybe come? And bring company!” He turned around and ran toward the fireplace to light a blaze, bone and wooden bands around his ankles clicking, and eagerly ran off to get spices and meat and be about cooking immediately.

Grimmjow watched and felt the verdant goddess touch him on the shoulder with a leafy hand. It really seemed like this small god had accepted that quickly. “He’s lonely.” He knew that feeling all too well.

“He _was_.”

That’s right…Grimmjow’s stoicism was tempted to take root again but in the moment he was too happy for that; it was so acceptable. He watched the antlered figure bounding about with such good feelings and billowing leathers, Grimmjow’s happiness showed in a light smile that would be still be rare. His hand holding the sword down by his side held on without squeezing the hilt.

“As much as you may need his help at times, protect _him_ too. There are monsters who would come here and your presence might bring some curious weather to draw them in.” The verdant goddess looked toward Grimmjow’s face instead of watching Ichigo. “Will you fight them together?” Her green lashed eyes blinked slowly with great patience.

Grimmjow’s hand tighten on the sword still watching his host. “We’ll _slay_ them together.”

The goddess smiled. She was right to have also given this man a second chance. It would be amusing to see what the bear would think of this new addition to the hall.

Ichigo rushed back to Grimmjow and with eagerness he stole the man away to learn how the bearded man had made that venison and vegetable soup which Grimmjow had once shared with him, because it was very good! And to pick mushrooms too! He was no longer lonely.

The verdant goddess departed from the hall to again return in the evening with other small gods when there would be a feast to welcome and honor the new warrior of the hall and the return of the hall’s master, _together_ in a verdant, fertile realm…and far from enemies.

**Endirinn**

**…Tímabundið?**

Read ALL my fanfictions on ArchiveofOurOwn.org. Art via: DeviantArt.com/FicticiousDelicious or FicticiousDelicious.Tumblr.com

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Drengr á Eldinum - Badass (warrior title) on the Pyre  
> panter af norðanvindinum - panther of the northern wind  
> Endirinn - The End  
> …Tímabundið? - ...Temporarily?
> 
> So yeah! That's where this one ends. I took some time rewriting the ending a few times because it wasn't satisfactory until this version. Indeed you don't find out what happens to all of the characters! That's not usually something I do, but it's open for more (or speculation) in any regard. I wanted to write a Norse, northern and myth-like story such as this badly for a short while and I'm glad I actually did it. Epic story.


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